customer is looking at the remote control "What button do I push to turn the unit on?"

Me: "You push the On button"

Cust: "What button changes the Channels"

Me: "The CH+ and the CH- button takes you up and down through your channel"

Cust: "I don't understand, up to where?"

Me: Trying to jump out a window!!!

What about the guys who think they have surround sound by taking the variable output of the TV into their 1976 Marantz Solid State Receiver with just two speakers.

I am actually bidding on a job right now where a competitor did his previous house. The customer cannot figure out volume controls! I understand he is like 80yrs old, but come on. Adjust the volume on the receiver, then you have sub volume controls in each room. Customer just looks at me with a blank look on his face.

Mike

Just recently installed a Viking door entry controller on a house that was wired several years back.

I push the doorbell button, the phones ring (as they should). Wife uses the phone and talks to me through the system.

Afterwards:

Wife says, "will the phone ring everytime someone pushes the doorbell button"?

Yes.

Will there be any extra charges?

What do you mean?

You know (god, how I despise that "you know" thing). Like long distance charges.

I don't know, how far is it to the front door?

Customer calls and receives help on purchasing asystem from the company I once worked for........big box mover,furniture and appliance....Loves the help everyone has given her on what to purchase and has a simple question.........

"Why no sound from my surround sound"........
Question 1...Power?....2....Is it on the correct input....#3 Is the volume turned up....so on an and so forth.....After 10minutes of trying to save a service call I ask her one
final question........make sure the wires are correctly pushed into the back of the B--E cubes.....

She says........"Wires"....."What Wires"...."I thought this system was wireless".......wah wah waaaaaaah.....

Client brings his older Sansui receiver in for service that his son just gave him - "I can't get any sound out of this." Hooking up headphones to get a quick heads up, I ask him, "What kind of speakers are you using?" With a puzzled look he responds, "Speakers?"

He thought the sound came out of the louvers on the top of it.


Then there's the guy who says, "I want to get this fixed under warranty." "But sir, it's seven years old and only had a two year warranty to begin with." "But this is the first time I've used the warranty!"

I was once showing a customer her new system and when we got to the DVD player she asked me how to rewind the movie when she was finished watching it. Trying not to laugh, I told her there was no rewinding a DVD. She thought that was the neatest thing.

How about:

My (insert relative here) just bought this for me as a (insert lie/excuse here) gift, so I don't need that one I had planned on, or had already, bought from you......

Oh no, OUR appointment was for next week. You must have got it wrong......

Where's my (insert any device you ever even mentioned at the initial meeting here) that was to be included?

"I don't hear anything out of the back speakers"

When I first started working at my first job, which was the Navy Exchange kind of like a Wal Mart or whatever. This one costumer came in and asked about his surround sound system that he bought the day before. He was telling me that the surround sound speakers doesn't sound right. So I made arrangments to go over his house after work. When I got there he had the rear speakers wired up to each other, which would of been alright until........ I got to the receiver, where they were wired up to both outputs. Granted, this is back in 95 where the outputs were the same amp. But I separated them just in case. Once I rewired them as they were supposed to be, played a movie of some sort. He said "How come I can't hear the voices out of the surround speakers?" My reply was "Because your not supposed to, unless the person talking is way in the 'back ground of the movie' This set up is called Dobly Pro Logic meaning that voices will come out of the center speaker only, unless the produces puts it some where else."

"So I spent 200 some odd dollars for that?"

"When you gonna start selling Bose?"

Nothing more needs to be said.

Trunk slammer you reminded me, our customers always seem to have a "friend" who works for "Sony", "Panasonic" or "Pioneer", where they just happened to get that great deal. (Bulls**t)

Can you please just hook it up?

I have a friend who does mostly commercial installs and he usually throws an extra letter or number in the model number to make it the teeniest bit harder to google. On the residential side, we are blessed that googling Sonance will bring up only a few sites, many of them with prices...in pounds....

Can't leave out the actual paid service call we had a couple of years ago, where we went out and turned over a CD, thus making the system work again.

And the look on the customer's face when you flip open the remote control to get at those buttons they can't find. You showed them this a year ago but they are blown away to see it.


Amen Brother.



This is one reason to have a two-zone system, where the second zone volume is out of reach of the customer.

BUT I have found a metphor that seems to work with everyone -- the watering system.

Pretend this is not sound distribution, but a system to water different parts of your garden. The receiver here is the water pump, and the volume controls in the different rooms are faucets around the property.

Want no watering? Turn the faucets off. Want water? Turn the faucets on!

Crucial now: Want more water? Be sure the faucets are on all the way before you go to the water pump and increase the pressure (turn up the main volume). Don't want to burst them 14 gauge hoses now, do we?

In a single zone system, this metaphor makes even more sense because the main volume control is right there on the face of the receiver, just itching to be rotated.

Hard to top that one.



Install the receiver bass ackwards in the cabinet, and the "main" volume control is no longer an issue....

YES I HAVE!

My best ever service call?

3 hours travel time for 2 minutes work (had to plug it in). And yes, we actually discussed this possibility on the phone. The wife was VERY emphatic that her husband could not do this.

I think she just had the hots for me.....lol

1.5 hours from Orlando to Tampa.
Put new batterys in remote (Doctor swore he had checked it).
Turned around and drove back to Orlando.

Sounds familiar... We had a customer deny that there was water damage to his camera and when we removed the tape it revealed footage from aboard a lake boat when suddnely there was a thump and the camera spun until you heard a splash and bubbles from underwater. He paid the evaluation fee and walked away quietly.