well, not everybody is the same, same as no all customers are the same, no all deals are the same and so on. For one, you can see what people says about us at
http://www.fdsign.com/design/news.html pretty far from being flaky or whatever
Not to spam our services since we really cannot work for SEO, just to show you your question "Are all designers complete fucking flaky deadbeats?" has an answer and it's a big "NO!". In my experience, I know more bad stories in the customer side than the designer side, you just check the board.
And btw, there are several design firms or individuals I'm sure they're really straight, such as
http://sexymojo.com, http://webinc.com, http://dickmansdesign.com, http://ialien.com and many more, sorry if I forgot any, I'm sure there are plenty more than those. I never heard a bad word against them, and I feel like I never will
