drgrauman,
That's software development. I cannot tell you the number of times a client has asked for a "simple report" or a "simple change" to our software and my boss would just say "YES!" without a second thought.
Weeks later, of course, my boss is then stomping around mad because that simple request turned into 800 lines of code and he, of course, had already said we would do it for free.
JamesNT