What I meant was that this client said this to me when I was meeting them for the first time & before I quoted anything... like setting me a challenge.
I'm tempted to ignore it and just give my quote as if he's said nothing about the other company, because there may not even be another company - he may just have been trying to set the price close to what suited him.
So he's setting you an expectation of what he expects to have to pay without even knowing what it is he definitely needs (-v- what you with your experience and background haven't yet told him).
Like this statement or not - there is a serious race to the bottom in Ireland for both Web Design and SEO.
There's going to be a lot of web designers who will setup their own company in 2009 because of a change in employment, a desire to have their own agency, because they feel they can/should. Many are "training on the job".
These may be doing so without a market demand for their services, so a natural and obvious place to start "differentiating" is on price. In any market, if your USP is price, then you've found a market where there is a demand for a service but not yours, at least that is a view that can be formed.
I'm just saying this because A) I see it happening and B) I'm not so sure if it's a good idea for them or for existing web designers. I think they'll tie up a lot of projects which will let people down/ruin reputations. I'm not against anyone opening up or saying they won't do a good job, I'm just saying it's happening and we need to understand this, look at it objectively etc.
For the most part, people expect a price from Company A can be compared to a price from company B for the * same * website.
So I expect we'll see a lot more. What you've got to do, is try to differentiate yourself in terms of making it clear you're trading history, reliability, support, capability, background knowledge, specialist knowledge in an industry or past working experience, SEO and SEO benefits and so forth.
There will be plenty of people looking for one pager sites or quick deals or custom templates. Given their budgets and contrasting pie-in-the-sky notions of suddenly being found in Google and waiting for the tidal wave of business that was out there just waiting for them to setup their one pager - leave them off. They not going to go anywhere and they'll have to start again with someone who can give them good advice.
That's my two cents in