I got a call from a homeonwer in the "old money", ultra high end neighborhood here in town a couple of years back. Seems the "clusterf***" of a system that one of my competitors had installed had finally conked out entirely.

It's December the 23rd, the lady of the house is having a major bash for all the "bluehairs" in their little enclave, and she wishes she could have her selection of Christmas tunes playing throughout the evening.

I dismantled the system, rerouted all the wiring so it could be operated as a large single zone system for the evening "gala" (as she called it) and returned the day after Christmas to return the system to a multi-source, multi-zone system that she could actually use (imagine 5 years of having the children turn the stereo on for you).

I billed at a standard rate for my time, got paid just like you would expect and went on my way.

A few days later I received a nice thank you card in the mail. Which had a check for $1,000.00 in it!