I've run into these things too. If a customer thinks I'm too expensive, I thank them for their time, and tell them to keep me in mind if they need help. Sometimes they call back after blowing even more time and money on the cheaper developer. Sometimes they find a great developer who is cheaper, and I've referred and farmed work out to a couple of those developers.
If the customer can't organize their key requirements themselves, or they don't have a rough schedule or budget, I tell them I need that as the bare minimum to have a discussion, unless they want to engage me to help them define their requirements. Any reputable freelancer is going to need requirements defined, there's no way around that unless the schedule and budget are open-ended.
I mainly do maintenance work so it's probably easier for my customers to define what's broken or what they need added than it was for them to define the application or web site from scratch.
If the customer can't organize their key requirements themselves, or they don't have a rough schedule or budget, I tell them I need that as the bare minimum to have a discussion, unless they want to engage me to help them define their requirements. Any reputable freelancer is going to need requirements defined, there's no way around that unless the schedule and budget are open-ended.
I mainly do maintenance work so it's probably easier for my customers to define what's broken or what they need added than it was for them to define the application or web site from scratch.