Starting the final install on a guys background system & Theater... This guy has been the most arrogant, paranoid-micro manager I've ever encountered... He just went to a distributor and bought a Russound sound CAV6 system. Here guys..."Huh what do you mean you won't install it"???
I told him we'll put it in the rack, but since we are not trained, or dealers... we don't want to program it etc... I set him up with a good Russound dealer programmer. My thoughts are this other guy knows the product, and can program it effeciently while we would be on a learning curve... and that wouldn't be fair to him financially or us.
Customer is all pissed, thinks I'm "just washing my hands of it"... But I;ve explained to him over and over... He bought the gear, it's really his baby - but I'd to a degree help the Russound guy, although I don't have any room profit wise to manage this guy...
Client is mad because he asked me if Russound was good stuff (many months ago) and I told him yes, but I've never been trained on it... As time grows nearer, this customer is getting really freaked... (He even signed a document i put together saying the Russound programming and owner tutoring was not our responsability - just the tHeater and background speakers)... The theater is totally seperate anyway... Now he is insisting I should be responsible for how it all works, and won't pay the final until it's 100%!!!! Any suggestions???
This is a pretty small job, yet he has over the course of 4 months sent me over 200 lengthy emails always challenging every suggestion, price and company procedure, my attitude, inability to always return his phone calls on the same day (I have about 15 emails about that)......Not to mention hinting I;m out io screw him over... I've given this guy probably close to a hundred fifty plus hours of my time... and he is always doubting, unhappy & looking for "the monster in the closet"... The sad thing is... I'm doing a fantastic job for him... not making (actually losing) money at this point... but he is making me crazy... At this point it's almost to late to tell him to go away... What would you do... or am I being a jerk?

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This guy is so ... man I don't know... He also got ticked at me because i quoted him $600 to mount (2) of his Plasmas, terminate them for component video, left and right audio, i.r. composite, s-video etc. all back to the main equiment rack... He says' I'm taking advantage of him... He said "Hell i can't see how that would take more than an hour to do, and besides we are already working there anyway!"... GOD he has me ticked off!!!!! Meanwhile he's spending over 1 mill on the remodel...

This guy has been the most


You had two good reasons from the beginning not to take on the install.
Zinon

How was he able to buy through the distributor?
Tell him for a "Nominal Fee" I will fly up and program it.
BTW - are you using any direct tv sat boxes in this job that will be tied to the Russound piece? If so, he will get a rude awakening when he finds out that they will not work with the system unless he gets some 56K IR Remodulators. Keep that one under your hat and if you wait until it becomes a problem, you could be a hero for solving that problem, or maybe not.

i had a guy like this a few years ago....... what a prock.... i told him to go fuc& himself.... turns out he did the same thing to another av guy in arizona the year before....

the builder actually sued him...quite funny

ed

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Fire them. There are clients in this world that you don't want. Figure out a way to know when to take a job and when to turn one down.

80% of your income comes from 20% of your clients. Fire the other 80% that always take up all your available resources for every little thing. Like ceied said, tell him to stick it... :-)

This only affects a handful of Direct TV boxes (H20's and H250's i believe) as they use some funky IR codes for their sat boxes. Of course you wont notice anything until you program them into the system. When you go to test them, they won't work. Dish is ok because I just convert the RF on them to IR.

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Not the dual tuners, but only the single tuners. I will use the second tuners to go to individual areas where they do not have distributed audio.

It would be cool to set the second tuners to IR, but I do not think they would work too well.

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ATOH, were you here, I would take my hat off to you and buy you a drink. I couldn't have said it better. (An accolade I rarely give) We all want to make money, I believe that is the defenition of being in business, but customers like this are, very simply more trouble than they are worth! Pack up your tools, and tell this guy to go fuc& himself! Spend the time you would be using to his benefit, certainly NOT yours, and use that time to cultivate some clients in that 20%. It may not be what you want to hear, but it IS the nature of the business we all chose.

Good luck to you.

I had a guy last summer that wanted to buy Nuvo kit on the internet & have me install it rather than pay my price I quoted for it in the bid. I refused & he said he would buy it from me if I matched the internet price, I refused & told him wer'e done. I told him to pay me for the prewire & I would be on my way. I got paid & never looked back! That guy was a jerk from the beginning.