My all-time favorite:

I'm running a crappy install dept. for a now-defunct high
volume/mediocre quality place, around 1985 I think.

Part of the job is issuing RA #'s for the store before they'll take back
any 12V product that was sold over the counter. This guy walks in one
day with a Coustic radio. Now, this is not what you would call a quality
device, it may even have been a refurb since we sold plenty of that junk
at the time.

The guy hands me the radio and says: "They told me to get an RA from you
so I can exchange this - it doesn;t work at all."

My response: "Ok, I just need to plug it in on our bench and verify that
it's DOA"

Now, keep in mind I have NO attitude at all - with this POS stereo, the
guy is probably right.

His response to me: "That's not necessary, I checked it myself and I'm
an electrical engineer"

NOW we're having fun, he just got my attention! I asked him politely:
"Really? What kind of stuff do you work on?"

Answer: "Organs" (the kind they used to sell in all the malls)

So I said, no worries but I do need to do this check so I can give you
the RA. So, I hook this thing up, and it works just awesome. He gives me
the usual, well it must be intermittent because when I (that's a big
capital I) put it in, it wasn;t working.

To make a long story end (can't make it short now), the guy never hooked
up the ground wire. I guess he figured that it should get grounded from
mounting it in his plastic dashboard.

I have met some great DIY types, ended up working with some of them that
got into the industry. I started that way myself, as did many of us.

BUT, Eddie is right - I've never seen ANY professional installations
that could compare with:

Battery cable from amp connected to positive terminal with Visegrips
(uninsulated ones at that). I think he had also routed it out of the
car's passenger compartment through the door opening, into the fender.

Or, all the wires in the molex plug on the back of a stock radio
attached to the little 1/8 pins with bare, uninsulated alligator clamps
- dude had actually taken the time to connect about 12 of them, and very
carefully slid them onto the pins. It was actually working, most of the
time. Wouldn't have taken any bets on the service life of that radio's
output chips though.

JD

Eddie Runner wrote:

Oh, and Durbin can probalby back me up on this one..

Generally stuff installed by do it yourselfers is FAR WORSE
that stuff installed professionally!!

Many brands discourage self installation just cause they
know customers burn up way more gear than pro installers do...