It was 2008...drywall sub contractor, customer, and builder are on site during the framing stage. A surround sound system and a flat screen TV conversation comes up. Mr. Drywall sub contractor says..."Hey, my finisher knows how to do that". Approximate worth of home: $1 mil.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Comcast upgrades all HD boxes in the home. New box for the surround system only has HDMI out. No way to connect to the flat panel TV over the fireplace. One week later...customer was referred to me by another customer. I get the call. Find out quickly the drywall finisher (aka CI) did the following:
1) HDMI cable from flat panel to A/V receiver too short. I see one end connected to the TV over the fireplace. The male connector no where to be found in the entertainment center. I later find it stuck in the hole drilled (too small) in the side wall of the cabinet. I manage to get it through...only about an inch now exposed.
2) Customer has an Onkyo AVR. HDMI switching is dead.
3) I soon learn the customer was using the coax connector for video. For 8 years, was watching standard definition video.
4) Found no digital audio inputs in use on the back of the defective Onkyo. For 8 years, the customer never had surround sound. Analog audio inputs only.
5) No sub woofer. 5" woofers on the 5 in wall speakers. Enough said.
6) 18 gauge "lamp cord" speaker wires ran through the walls.
7) Separate Sherwood amplifier for pool speakers...okay...whatever.
8) Bluray player was there, but never used.
Conclusion: I replaced the Onkyo and Sherwood amps with a 2 zone networked Yamaha AVR one day before their Super Bowl party. Customer now has HDTV and 5.1 surround sound, and use of the bluray player. Customer very happy now. Hoping for a few more referrals. Had to tell someone who would understand.

Been there, done that. It's amazing how people go with the "I know a guy" line but don't check to see if they are a REAL company that deals with whatever services they are purchasing.

I am sure you will get referrals as you must have a very happy client now.

This is OT but equally frustrating...

These "Blu-ray AVR" HTIB's are annoying as hell. Every person i know calls me up asking about how to connect their sources to their "Home theater receiver"...i ask for the model number and find it's one of these pieces of junk with no or not enough inputs. Why do these exist?

The exist because #marketshare and app kickbacks

And so many people want cheap junk

They exist because people buy them! They do not know any better! Same reason the drywall guy got paid to install an awesome system. Customer had no expectations, and must have thought it was awesome or they would have had it fixed long ago. Like before 8 years went by. They must have no friends with brains either. Someone would have said something. Surely, they had someone in 8 years over to watch a game or something and noticed the crappy picture and sound, right? Well, their friends may have the system Mac linked to above, so what do they know?

It takes all kinds. Every time I drive by the title loan/pay day loan places, I think, WTF? Who actually uses those? Well, there must be a bunch of people willing to pay $200 to get a $1000 loan on their $1000 paycheck. Or pay the 25-35% interest on a title loan. If no one used them, they would not be there, right?

I can easily top that....


The builder decided to wire his own house.

He ran a single 18x2 lamp cord to each room. ONE home run wire from his "office" each of the twelve rooms. Tops it off with nailing a single gang box to the ceiling joists, so a round ceiling speaker wasn't really an option.


I couldn't help but laugh at what he had done. Didn't get him as a builder client. Don't know why. ;-)

Worked on a rush job at a house that was built as a spec home and they wanted to show it that night. They had the security guy run speaker wire. Note the word 'wire'. We found the end in the kitchen, but couldn't find a head end, so we looked for all of the speaker wires. We found them coming out of a few walls, but they were all a pair of wires- he had daisy-chained them. We needed to mount two flat screen TVs and since we carried mainly Fijitsu plasma, that's what we brought. When we got there, we found a single coax at each location, coming out at the joint at the wall and ceiling. The electrician had punched a hole in the cinder block for the AC, which is a code violation and the drywall was on the cinder block wall with no space, so we cut out the drywall and laid a piece of plywood on the block, fastened it using stacked washers as spacers and covered it with the mount. We had to trench through the drywall to get the cables down to the TV. I don't remember where the source was- possibly in a cabinet below or closer to the kitchen, but I do remember that we needed to use an Audio Control piece to send HD video. The room next to the kitchen had a flat ceiling, so we were able to put the speakers in without a problem but the master bedroom had a trayed ceiling and the speaker wires came out at the corner where the angled part of the ceiling met the flat field in the middle. The TV cabling was the same and again, we had to trench to get the cable to the TV.

The next day, the company Director came into the installer's office and asked for my opinion of the house and I told him it was pretty bad. The painters missed a lot of places with the top coat, so it left only primed wood, they left paint splatter on the dark hardwood stair treads and the joints in the trayed ceiling were incredibly crooked.

He said they accepted an offer that night, for $1.4 Million.

I've been there.

This is all so easy. Why should a customer pay top dollar for a formal CI installation when the kid down the block knows it all?

The worst is when I bump up against an unseen "expert friend". I can only interact with the expert friend through the customer and the customer is paraphrasing both my and the expert friend's responses. Usually, the friend has more credibility because I'm obviously trying to run up the tab. Overall, it is best that I fade away sooner rather than later. Besides, they'll probably want to buy everything online and substitute cheaper stuff from my specification.

When I did car audio, I saw hundreds of cars and trucks with terrible and unsafe wiring, usually because something didn't work correctly, if at all. Most of them said "I have a friend/neighbor/relative/someone from the old "I got a guy" crowd who's good with this stuff" and I would start by saying "No, they're not!" before showing them why. If I had photos of some jobs, I'm not sure people would believe they weren't altered.

Penny smart, dollar foolish.

Even worse when the label reads "bose".

I have had so many of these over the years they all kinda blend together. "My cousin the software engineer", "the kid down the street" "my brother in law that worked at Best Buy for the summer in 2003". All just kinda make me cringe.

Recently I had one that broke the trend. I submitted a proposal for a network at an existing client's house. She forwarded my proposal to her son in law who was a network guy. Not only did he complement my list of equipment, he recommended that she go with the more expensive of the two models of WAP that I had as options on the proposal. I picked up a check the next morning.
Thanks client's son in law!

Whenever I'm told xxxx says they can do it for xxxx price, my automatic 1st response is this:
"Sir, you should also ask the landscape company to give you a price on installing all your electronics. They usually work for the cheapest prices of all."

If the customer doesn't catch on to this, then it usually is a red flag to walk away. Customer is probably a complete idiot that is use to causing everyone (including himself) grief.

Shade guy at a recent project had about 30 Cat5's to tone & label. He had a tempo tone generator and a cheapo lan tester. Two guys with cell phones using the Lan tester to locate cables. I told him a couple of times to tone them, tag and terminate them then test them. Nope...his takes-twice-as-long way was "faster".

After spending 3 weeks toning and labeling cables he had the nerve to send the client a bill for $8k to cover the extra time.

The same thing is posted on the Drywallers forum about CIs that want to be Drywallers.

[Link: 420magazine.com]