Never Pay For Application Development Services Again

Design: Free
Implementation: $5
Working System: Priceless

Part A:

Find an IT company willing to write a detailed quote for free.
Bully them until they either drop their price to $5, or they quit revising the quote.
If the IT company quits, then find another IT company, get them to write a 'more detailed' quote, based on the previous quote.
If the result is good enough to begin implementation, move on to part B.
Otherwise, back to step 2.

Part B:

Rename the quote document to 'detailed design'
Find an IT company willing to mock up a prototype based on the detailed design.
They should be willing to do this for free based on loose promises about a highly-paid implementation and deployment scenario. Other fantasies can be used to deceive.
If, despite all your best fairy tale stories, the IT company is not willing to do the prototype for free -- go to step 2.
If the prototype is good enough, put it into production. End.
Otherwise, find an IT company willing to 'take a look at a few bugs' in a prototype you've got.
They should be willing to do this for free based on loose promises about a highly-paid implementation and deployment scenario. Other fantasies can be used to deceive.
If, despite all your best fairy tale stories, the IT company is not willing to 'take a look at' (ie. resolve) the bugs for free -- go to step 6.

Part C:

Burn any invoices that show up.
Remove finger prints.
Delete emails.

its the "Chinese Whispers" development model.Maybe the trick is to embed weird proprietary code with a really obscure eula, then sue the value of the project out of them.

Oh, wait a minute. Avanade.

While I was reading this I found myself twiddling my fingers, and muttering "excellent..." in my best C. Montgomery Burns voice. Truly evil Leon, I love it...

I love it Leon.

I know of a company that did something similar to a web-designer friend of mine. He mailed them 2 images of how their finished website would look, and they were soo unimpressed they said they decided to work with someone else.

That someone else turned out to be a webdeveloper they hired for "here is the design, you give us the HTML", which he did, the spa. They claimed that the HTML wasn't standards compliant, passed it on to their inhouse web guy, and sure enough, it's a real live website now.

Total cost: $0

Lesson Learned: Don't give anything away until you've got cash or a contract. ESPECIALLY if you really need the money.

That is so eeeevil! ;)

In fact, that's basically what my company does. We receive a RFP and then we bid it out to subcontractors until we get a $5.00 bid. PURE PROFIT!

(yes, I'm kidding)

That sounds like a similar project that I worked on earlier this year.

Build a prototype, get handed off to a new project manager on the client side. Hear about how it doesn't work.

Revision meetings for weeks.

They get the code for free.

Lame.