Am I a charity and do everything for free?!

When I just got into design business, there was a client came to me and acted like he was interested in hiring me and asked me whole bunches of interior design related questions and then never heard from him again. Later on, I found out he found a contractor by himself and started to build his house based on the suggestions I gave him just few weeks back. Well, a hard lesson learned, and I have never talking about any design detail until I'm hired since. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to save money by digging as much information as they can from designers and then cutting them off the hook. Low down dirty shame.