But yeah, it was a 100k problem. All or nothing. Either it was fixed or not. The previous contractor had completed 97% of the work, had billed $10k, and then left when the company wouldn't pay any more.

I swooped in, finished the last 3%, got all the glory, and charged 3k. The business thought I was a miracle worker.

To be clear, the previous contractor did a crap job communicating with the business to explain how things were progressing and made it look like this would be a black hole the business was throwing money into. Had the previous contractor said "we're really close, we just need a little bit more money" the whole thing likely would have resolved without my intervention. But communication matters, I suppose.