Disclaimer: If you have a large project, you probably are going to want to discuss.
Hear me out. I'm sure we all know the drill, you look at their description, and their gig price.
Think to yourself: This is exactly what I need, I'll send them the details and see what they think.
They write back with an estimate, you know, 4 to 8 times higher than their posting.
.... Common? Or is that only me?
What I'm suggesting, is that if your requirements are a match with their posted prices - skip the discussion and make the order. If they honor their advertising, everyone walks away happy. If they don't honor, and they cancel the order, you've only lost a bit of time (time you probably would have spent negotiating and explaining everything to someone you weren't 100% sure you would go with anyway.)
The risk is low for you. Sellers are encouraged to follow through with their commitment and stated prices, as canceling would penalize them. Also, if they are overbooked, they probably shouldn't be trying to take on more gigs. Which we all recognize as the project that starts, and you don't see much progress until a few days in or the last day.
I am not at all advocating taking advantage of people by taking an order and handing them specs that are completely unreasonable and out of line with the offer (in such a case, I think that the dispute process would provide leniency to the seller). I am saying, that the way to correct the behavior of misleading prices is to call the bluff. If you think the basic / standard / premium is just a guideline, it's not. It's a completely fair way to take someone into a contracted service. Sellers are fully capable of promising services that are accurate and priced accordingly - the fact they don't do this, is 1) normalized, 2) a bad faith start on their side.
I call this practice 'sniping', which is browsing the descriptions and finding who offers a basic/standard/premium service but has it deeply under-priced. The times I've done this, the sellers have called me out in their displeasure that the order wasn't discussed. However, they did complete the job.
Thanks for considering.
I understand what you're saying jonbass, but it's not that serious. It's also a term used in war context, as well as hunting for little creatures on the farm. Ma and pa used to send me out sniping, I never caught one but you can believe I spent the day and night out there yelling 'snipe' as I closed in on them. In the way that I use it, is more about picking off the lone offers sitting out there in a sea of offers. Because if you find it and get it, the seller is going to realize their position and change it to more accurately represent their services.
