When you find someone who never makes a mistake, they may also claim to have odorless feces.

I once thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.

We can't smell you from here, so who knows... you might be D-1.

At least it's not to the point where you're getting THAT odor, and B.O. mixed up...

Fer sherr!

Programmer's who have you retesting cables allover the home when the problem exists in software. 4 hours later "oops".

Cabinet Makers who have never seen an amplifier and happened to forget to drill pass thru holes in the 4" hardwood.

Electricians who think one outlet is enough in the control room and butcher the ceiling so bad you have no place to run cable.

Drywallers who throwout your speaker rings and pull your wire thru a hole. And dont forget the way they botch every plaster ring so your control device or wall plates never fit properly.

Cable,phone,alarm guys who dont notice that all your cables are neatly ran. Instead they take the most direct route and unplug your surge protector to make room for that over sized power supply.

Home owners who change device locations as the wind blows while wondering whats taking so long.

General contractors who call you out to the job late and point the finger at you when his guys arent done pouring the basement.

Product vendors who sell directly to clients or the clients electrician as if that makes it ok.

Pizza places for never having an all you can eat buffet.

People who ramble on about problems they cant avoid.

Oh thats me.

Stall In that is great. I have another one to add, owners who drop the ball and sell Yamaha receivers and inceiling speakers to clients who only want the best of the best but aren't knowledgable as to what that is when it comes to custom home cinema aplications.

that one may just be me to

Ok, so here goes. I'm working as an installer for a custom installation company in Gainesville, Fl while my future ex-wife is there attending college. It's not the best job in the World, but it's what I do and there's only two A/V companies in town and I'd already quit the first one. I'm in the boss's office discussing the goings-on of the day when a customer suddenly rounds the corner. The day goes normal to unlike any other.
So the customer comes around the corner and is immediately irritated at something, but my employer isn't the type of person who takes well to interruption of his train of thought, or for that matter, pretty much anything. He tells the customer to get out, as he is having a discussion with one of his employees, and he'll talk to him when he's done here. Well, the customer isn't going to go anywhere, and in fact begins his complaint without acknowledging my boss's previous statement.
I take this as my cue to leave, but there's a problem with that. The irate customer is blocking the door.
The situation quickly gets ugly. The customer has a problem, the boss won't hear it, and neither will listen to the other long enough to hear what's actually being said. Within a minute they're shouting at each other. In a few more, they're standing toe to toe. Suddenly, my employer grabs the phone and threatens to call the police if this guy doesn't get out! And what does the customer do? He grabs the phone out of my boss's hand and says he can't do that because he himself is going to call the police first!
So here I am, trapped in the bosses office, watching two red-faced and fully grown men scrabbling for the phone to call the police on one another, doing my best to somehow merge with the chair I'm sitting in, or, failing that, become invisible entirely. In retrospect, it's one of those moments I'll always treasure, but at the time, it was damn embarrassing.

You should have grabbed the phone, and in your best King Solomon voiced, declared:

"I'll settle this! I'll call them!"

I doubt it would have settled anything, but it may have made them both take pause enough to think about their behavior.

If nothing else, it would have been the only humorous thing at the moment. Fun for you, anyway. : - )

Sure is great customer service.

Hi Guys,

Thanks again for the posts, these were great!

To answer one of the questions about which publication this is for --

It's a new mag called "Custom Retailer" which will be launching at CEDIA. As for embarassing yourselves in print with horror stories, please don't worry -- I've framed the editorial so that the problems are identified as the problems, not the installers who have to deal with them.

I invite you all to subscribe to Custom Retailer. It's free to trademembers. For a signup, go to www.customretailermag.com.

See you at CEDIA, and thanks again to those that participated!

Ron

Seattle, WA -- A story I heard talking to another installer in the industry, not something that WE did.... 15,000 sq ft home completed, fully furnished and lived in, the installer was in the attic over the main living area adding a keypad wire when he accidentally unknowingly stepped on a fire-system pipe and made a small crack. The homeowners left for a month long vacation and came back to several inches of water covering their in layed wood flooring, molding, rugs, furniture, cabinets, etc. $200k damage thank god for insurance!!! all you guys that dont have it, read this a few more times!

STALL IN:
let me add persons I have found of a certain nationality (everybody assume it is them and get offended, now) who shop you, then grind you, then tell you they want you to do the deal, then when the work is nearly done start to negotiate a new lower total price.

Air conditioning contractors who see the only access hole, 24" x 24", through an 18" thick concrete foundation wall, and place a 24" round duct in it. for that matter, A/C contractors who seem to place ducting as though nobody will ever have to go up there/down there again. Ever hear of the A/C contractor who started at the wrong end of the attic and still lives there because there is no way to get past any of the ducting?

The fellow installer who is enthusiastic to the client about getting HDTV over the air before you, the antenna guy, drive up the canyon and see that the place gets dark at 3 p.m. and the stations are just over that hill...then forty miles away (so no ground wave).

The early experience when I was so proud to have run a plastic duct dead level about 18" below the ceiling, where the customer wanted it, only to step back and see the ceiling was not level, so the duct looked wrong.

Believe it or not, the alarm company that ran two coaxes to each TV outlet in the house, to be used for satellite and cable. RG59. About 60% copper braid. No foil.

The client who said at the beginning that he already had someone to run the cable, so I say no problem, only to find out after all the walls are closed that the cable runs to all computer locations for cable modems (wrong anyway, I think), but not to any of the four TV locations. Did I say the walls are closed now?

The poor cabinetmaker who made an eighteen-foot wide wall to wall cabinet, featuring the customer's Proton monitor, only to have me point out when the cabinet is half-installed that something looks wrong...turns out that the guy who measured the monitor for the perfect size cabinet opening and the guy who measured everything for putting in the pocket doors did not talk to each other. The pocket doors were mounted inside the opening that was the perfect size for the TV. The entire cabinet went back to the shop.

Speaking of wrong cabling, we had a client who thought we were too expensive to prewire his house for speaker cables...
He decided to buy the Monster Cable from us at $1.50 per foot and have his electrician install it. Well, he got it installed. All except for the in-wall volume controls, which, being an electrician, he equated to DIMMERS...(who can finish this story)?
Although he had stereo pairs originating at the electronics and two pairs lying in the ceiling for flush mounts, he only had ONE PAIR going down the wall for the DIMMER (I mean VOLUME CONTROL).
We had to come in and, now that the sheetrock was all up, cut each line a minimum of twice to run the two pair down and back. That beautiful Monster cable was cut into multitudinous pieces and held together with two boxes of wire nuts, as needed.
The homeowner ended up spending over twice as much. I guess he was going to nail the electrician for the costs...