During this past summer, projects were a little scarcer than they are today. During this time, I was contacted by an older client about some updates to her website. Hungry for work, I emailed her an informal proposal, offering to do the work fairly cheaply hoping to pick up the project quickly. Now, several months later, and extremely busy with a variety of well-paying projects in hand, she emailed me back with the go-ahead on the projects. Of course my pricing, if quoted today, would be quite different than what was quoted over the summer, and my big misstep was not including a "this price is good until..." statement with the quote.
While I could refuse to do the work for the price, or renegotiate, changing the price now seems as though it could negatively impact the relationship with the client, since they were expecting the price I originally quoted. Without including an expiration date with the quote, I left myself no room for adjustment to reflect my current rates.
I will likely just perform the work at the price stated, which in reality costs me money, since it is time spent not working on projecs at my normal rate.
Moral of the story: Include an expiration date any prices quoted for work.
