They initially hired me to do "network security" work. Another similar email-then-bill situation is me responding to them telling them why I won't, under any circumstances, figure out who wrote a Glassdoor review.

A lot of it is about setting boundaries with the client. If I have a conversation with you a handful of times to remove password from a whiteboard and you don't do it, that's a big deal and would professionally impact me if something bad happened. Cause like, your client's clients includes Coinbase. Like another person commented -- I really should have just dropped them as a client because the professional risk was too high.

> Another similar email-then-bill situation is me responding to them

That’s not what I’m talking about.

Responding to a company is responding to a request they made for your time.

That said, most contractors I’ve worked with would not bill for a short email saying they’re unable or unwilling to do some work as a professional courtesy. The contractors who literally bill and round up for every email are usually going out of their way to maximize billing, which is eventually accounted for in the rates we’re willing to pay for them. We learn quickly that certain contractors will bill and round up for everything, so the most we’re willing to entertain as an hourly rate for them is lower as we know they’re going to send arbitrarily higher amounts of hours over.