Little rant for October, as this is happening more and more. You get an enquiry, you invest a lot of time into the potential client by sending numerous long emails regarding the project, best ways forward, best practises, budgets, and so on. You then find out through the web grapevine, that they have commissioned somone else, for whatever reason, and they are now in full swing. This in itself is of course, not a problem, but when you spend so much time going back and forth with a potential client, it would be nice to get an email saying “Sorry, won’t be using you for XYZ reasons but thanks for your time” – I think that’s just good business and good etiquette.