It sounds to me that he doesn't see this from the toxic client's point of view, and is at risk of passing up work that he views as toxic, but really isn't. We

It sounds to me that he doesn't see this from the toxic client's point of view, and is at risk of passing up work that he views as toxic, but really isn't. We just had a quote in for some mailshot work for us that looked awfully highly priced for what it was as everything on the quote had things that we could do ourselves with mailchimp, but the key thing that we would've relied upon for them to do that we couldn't do ourselves (mailshot template design, modifying the content to maximise attention) wasn't even mentioned on the quote. When bidding, it's sometimes easier to justify your prices by highlighting the value in the things your potential customer can't do, rather than the stuff they can and try to do it cheaper than their internal guys. There are toxic clients out there and they should be avoided, but sometimes cheap, good and fast means cheap enough, good enough, fast enough and (most importantly) takes care of my pain.