[philderbeast]

The problem is these clients have no idea what they are doing, they should be working out if something will be ready before booking.

If they are coming to you telling you the deadline and asking if you can meet it you know your going to have problems with them. Invariably they won't have a backup for when its not done on time for whatever reason.

[ajb]

Yeah. The point remains though- even if they haven't booked yet, at some point they're gonna book and then it's a hard deadline. There are even cases where it's valid to come to you with a deadline: can't move Christmas, for example.