The worse is when you sell a new system and the customer declines the programmable remote because the price is way too much money to spend on a remote.

Then when the system is installed and they have five remotes on the table and you are trying to show them how to work the system. You show them how by picking up all the different remotes.

When they try it they are totally lost and can't work the system. They act a bit mad that the system is so complex and difficult to use. We remind them that the remote we proposed could do everything that they do with a single push of the button. They say can you write up a detailed instruction sheet how to use all the remotes. We comment that we can but this is the exact reason we recomend the programmable remote and we can do the write up but it is charged at our normal labor rate. But we brought a remote with us so if you still want it we can program it for you now.

Wow, that just happened to me at Christmastime. At an old folks home, they were doing a Christmas show. Old guy walks out with his song book, singing "LEON, LEON!"

Someone side stage whispers loudly, "Turn it around!!"

Guy starts singing, "NOEL, NOEL!"

Back when everybody knew about illegal immigrants but few people made much noise about them, there was the joke about the guy who climbed the fence into the stadium and found a place near the flag where he could watch the game.

The guy was quite touched at the welcome he got, since, just before the game, everybody stood up,turned in his direction, and asked him in song, "Jose, can you see?"

One of my clients married a guy who said he's a metallurgical engineer and works for a company as the IT guy. Says he likes building computers. Says he likes technology. Says he hates ANYTHING to do with Apple and wants to stream music from his old Droid, so he bought a Chrome Stick but the house has thick masonry walls and *he thinks* the cheap little DLink routers (one is set up as an access point) should work. (*I edited this to make it 'he thinks'...", so Ernie wouldn't a point of telling me that a house can't think the little DLink routers would work)

She called to ask if I could look at the system in the Master Bedroom- he couldn't get it to work, told her she wasted a bunch of money on cheap crap" and she had to "talk him off of the ledge". I looked at it- when he couldn't get the bathroom speakers to turn on, he started pressing buttons, including the master power switch for the AudioSource power amp (mechanical switch) and speaker selector (stereo receiver). Since the power amp wouldn't turn on, the Niles muting volume control had no voltage and even if it had, no signal would have reached it.

I arrived, pressed an activity button on the Harmony 650 and things lit up, but no lights on the power amp or VC. Pressed the power button and those fired up, but I heard nothing in the bedroom until I saw that Speakers B were on, but A weren't. Once I corrected those, it worked fine, so I checked it with all activities and everything was good.

Next time he texted to tell me that he pressed the DVD button on the remote in the main area and the DVD didn't play, so he asked what he needed to do. I texted "Press the Play button". Didn't hear anything since then, but I have spoken to her and she didn't say anything about it not working.

Dumbass!

A good client of mine tells me the remote is not working the cable box now. I bit of phone trouble shooting (is the IR emitter dangling instead of stuck on the cable box, etc) proved fruitless. Off I go to a site visit. The remote was working fine, but he had changed providers and had all new IP TV boxes, and a new router. I explained what was going on and spent several hours reprogramming remotes, getting other devices reliant on the network back up and running, and fixing things the Bell buy rewired. Awesome.

Craig.

Sometimes, they're like children. They see no connection between the Cable Guy installing new equipment and not being able to control it with a remote that someone else had to program, almost like it adapts to whatever changes occur, and even after they had to start using a new network password. I knew that one client's router had been changed before they even had a problem logging into their cameras or music server from a remote location because, if I couldn't, it means the guy who installed it didn't bother to check for port forwarding.

I thought I was the only one with technology inept clients. I should have know I was getting in deep when I noticed husband had a printout near his monitor in his office titled "How to Forward an Email".

The electrician didn't label the circuits, so I was labeling the dimmer packs in the C4 panels by going to a touchscreen near the pool table, and turning on a few lights, then checking to see which indicator lights went off at the dimmer pack. A few days later, I get a call that the exact touchscreen isn't working. I drive up to check it out. Touchscreen is dead. I pull back the rack to check the connection at the POE switch. It's not there. I look down to the other (non POE) switch and there is the wire labeled "Bar Touchscreen" in THAT switch. I told him what I found. I told him it COULDN'T have worked. His response? "That's weird."

Recently fired a client after he told me the Integra "thing" I installed was not working.

Told him he needed call the guy that installed that Integra "thing". since I have never sold the line.

He was adamant that I installed it. Would not take no for an answer.

Checked my saved file for his MX980 remote, and sure enough, it still had the original Yamaha code sets from the last update when I replaced a failed Denon (he had supplied) with the Yamaha.

Called him back and said I would not be coming by ever again.

I had a client once tell me the whole upstairs used to be on the ra 2 before I add a second main repeater. I tried to add a couple dimmers they kept giving me an error. I pulled a few dimmers out and they were all maestros

Well, my experience is that this is at least half on you.
A simple error we can all make is to simply believe our clients, especially when they give us technical details. They AREN'T technically inclined and have zero idea that whatever brand they remember isn't necessarily what's in their house.

We shouldn't EVER believe a conclusion they give us as to what's bad or wrong; the best we can do is tentatively accept that the symptom they tell us about is correct.

I'm omitting the details I could provide....

A local architect sends jobs our way, usually after the place is 50+% painted. (After he has been working on the site for weeks) His electrician lives on another planet. We encounter newly installed TV outlets that are wired through dimmers or aren't connected at all.

He's a complete scatter brain. We've done three houses that he has personally lived in -- you'd think that he would know the routine by now.

In one of his rehabs on a house owned by a long time customer of ours, there was a mess of 1950's phone wire (8-pair cable run throughout at outlet level). As usual we were called too late and the equipment must go "here". Speaker wires that we ran years ago were cut because ... er ... I can't think of a good reason why because they ran to exactly the correct spot. We would have had to tear up most of the walls in order to run new phone wires. I rang out enough of the (heavily spliced) phone mess to prove that I could provide phone jacks at the required points and told him (and the crew) not to damage any of the wires that ran through vulnerable, yet to be closed (in a few hours) areas. When we returned for the final fit out, we discovered that someone had removed most of that ugly phone wire and network CAT-5 that we had pulled was used to daisy chain phones. The architect "couldn't understand how that happened". (I must have been delusional) The customer had to make do with cordless phones.

In this case the error was not on me, the client had bought every switch in the house himself . It was a take over he begged me to take on. I told him many times I have the original file. I had already charged him $475 for the last time he told his system "used to do this " and I proved him wrong.

I'm sorry, but the error was on you because you believed a layman as to exactly what brand and model was installed. I mean, now that you are where you are, don't you think you should have confirmed what he told you?

This is the most extreme case of this kind of thing I've heard of, but I can see this happening to me and your experience has made me more adamant than before that we cannot simply take as accurate what our clients tell us. They hire us because we know so much more than them... we should exercise the wisdom we've accrued!