[joshuanomed]

The designer is going to extract enough money from you to make it worth their time to work on the project. If you refuse to pay for meeting time, or reduce the amount you'll pay for meeting time, they'll just translate that loss of income into longer labor time.

Put another way: that one on one meeting time is labor, they're trying to understand what it is that you want to build and clarify the requirements so that when they do the "labor" they get it done well the first time.

Put yet another way: when you meet with a product manager to get the requirements for code that you're supposed to write, do you do so for free or a reduced salary, because it's not "real" labor?