You can set every expectation in the world, alllll of that goes out the window when Mr. Joe Blow wants an answer. The ONLY way to avoid them is to start charging like a lawyer and charge by the minute, including all forms of contact (phone, text, email...). I set the expectations, but they do not stop clients from contacting me. The bulk of my clients are not too tech savvy. Have one now that said one of their speakers is not working in one of the rooms. It happens to be a room with bookshelf speakers. I asked them to please check the connections, and if still not working, just swap the two. I can do it next week when I can get down there, but figured give them the option to try and correct it themselves. Told them to pay attention to which terminal that individual wire colors are connected to. They could not even get the speaker disconnected. That is fine, they just have to wait for me to get there. Point is this is the level of client I often deal with.

Any device that they connect to the network we "become responsible for". Already have one client who got a Amazon Fire tablet for the holiday that is not connecting to the network reliably. Keeps dropping off every minute or two. Guess who got an earful because, "it should just work". I am tired of those types of calls. That job has a TC system so the network is necessary. But I'll be damned if I am going to put myself in that situation on a job in which I am just hanging a TV and putting a cable box and bdp in a cabinet. It's not worth it TO ME.

As the race to the bottom continues, and cable companies, alarm companies, hell, Amazon all start to push services that intertwine a bit with what we do, my interest in this industry continues to wane. At this stage of my life, this has become a job and nothing more. No passion, just a job. I will do what I can to take the stress out of it as much as possible. If you wish to sell networks on every job, that is great as long as it works for your business model. For me, I am just not that interested in doing that unless necessary.