>>How do most contractors place warrenties on their
>>work.

>rather program on an original XT than make a fixed
>bid.
>

This is a statement that I have found to be true. I have made only two fixed-bids in my life, and both bit me in the behind. The first I ended up working for about $4.00 /hr, and the second for around $10.00 /hr.

This was mostly due to my lack of experience in negotiations with the client. I being young in the game gave away many enhancements to the products for the original price.

I now do not except contracts on a project basis, I usually except termed contracts were I am theirs to put to work on any project that they see fit for a period of time (I do not except less that 1 yr, even though there seem to be alot of 6mos ones out there.)

I thing that of all the possibilities that I have read in this thread, a compromise might be in getting complete specs up front, then spending the time with the customer discussing them.

Make you bid 4 or 5 times the actual estimate, but explain to the customer that this is what you have done. But simply bill them for the hours on the project, not to exceed the bid. For those of you that feel that this is not fair enough, you can always write a clause into the contract that would allow a percentage of the unused time to be billed as incentive for early completion.

But overall the best that I see for the customer is that you enter into a contract where either the end is open, or you have a fixed number of hours that you work, completed or not.

As it has been pointed out in a previous message no matter how detailed the specs are there is always something that comes up, that the customer or you did not think of, or that needs changed because it just don't work the planned way ect..

Best of luck to all of ya.