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I had this happen in a previous life, when I was working on designing/building/selling HPC and storage systems. Two of the worst offenders were universities, one was a prop-shop, one a semiconductor processing firm. One uni called me up to tell me they liked my bid, but they wanted me to teach another company how to to what we could do, so they could buy from the other company. The second uni issued an RFP, required that they get to keep all the docs, including detailed design specs. After interviewing all the companies, mine included, they selected 2 finalists, us and someone else. They probed us hard for details. Wound up buying our design from the other guys. The prop shop did a similar thing, though we won the RFP. But then custy went silent while working on PO. They then awarded it to our competitor, as long as they used our design. The semiconductor firm had a problem they claimed they could solve internally (they couldn't), and wanted to see what we could do. We met all of their (aggressive) performance, capacity objectives. But they kept pumping us for "free work" with the promise of a very large contract later. Against my business partner's recommendation, I called them on it, indicating that we'd be happy to work on the project with them. But not for free. So they "fired" us, as in asked us to stop working on it. Now, 4 years later, they are still struggling with the task. Sadly, this is far too common. |
> they wanted me to teach another company how to to what we could do
Here one might triple? their rate for a much shorter hourly design contract and leave implementation to someone else. The other two examples might have creative solutions as well.