Almost lost a potential client because of this weird model...

So, I've been dealing with a potential client on doing Google Places and SMS marketing, it's a local restaurant.

I got a message from them saying they were going to go with somebody else.

I replied by asking who the company was.

He called me a few days later to tell me about the deal.

The deal was to rank his in Google Places 1 time for $1000 upfront. The "consultant" justified this by saying the business keeps its rankings for quite a long time, so it looks more attractive then our offers around here of pay every month.

Then, I found out, this "consultant" used the selling point that he has gotten other companies to the top of Google for the EXACT same term.

So, what he is doing is taking peoples $1000, ranking the business, then moving on and ranking another business for the exact same term, telling them they will hold their rankings so no reason to pay monthly, and then going and competing against them almost immediately.

He also showed my potential client the insanely over-inflated search numbers of "broad" match in the keyword tool, which I think is crap when people use that, especially for Google Places since the places listings only show up for a select few type of searches.

Is anybody using this model?

On the face of it it's a pretty good way to get people to trust you since you're showing them the ranking results of their last client, but why not turn it into a monthly thing and leverage those results by going after different cities.