Not surprised at all. I got one of their emails again today and read through it for maybe the second time.
Utterly unbelievable the conditions they put on this, starting with requiring the shopper to pay for a BG check and drug test and only reimburse it after two shops. Quite likely after doing one shop, the shopper will have no interest in doing a second shop.
I think they would do better to drop the IC approach and hire some temporary workers to go from BB to BB doing these as employees. I don't even know if there is an amount of money they could offer to get me to do this as an IC who could be booted off the project on any whim at all, having to front the testing and the travel and take a chance of the report being rejected. I'd do it as an employee because they'd have to pay me for my time whether they liked my work or not.
It's just way, way too speculative for my blood. Maybe if I lived in a metro area where there were multiple shops to do, but I'd have to travel to two different towns 100 miles from me to be able to do two of them.
They're never going to find anyone to do that single BB in a remote town without paying a heck of a lot more than they're offering.
Time to build a bigger bridge.