Had a customer show me something about door contacts I'd never seen

I was installing a system in a house over in Springville last Tuesday, and the homeowner comes out and watches me put a door contact on his front door. He says 'you know those things work better if you line them up just right on the frame edge.' I thought yeah sure buddy, I've done hundreds of these. But he showed me his old install from 5 years ago where he'd cut a small recess in the door frame so the magnet sat flush instead of sticking out. Said it stopped false alarms from people bumping into it. Never crossed my mind to recess them like that. Anyone else run into customers who knew a trick you'd never heard of?

2 comments

2 Comments

paul3461d ago

Wait, so this homeowner taught you something after you've done hundreds of installs? That's rough, man. I had a similar moment when a 12 year old showed me you can use a paperclip to reset a panel I'd been rebooting by pulling the battery for 30 minutes every time. Made me feel like a total boomer who can't work a smartphone.

julia_patel1d ago

Thats the thing about people who actually live with this stuff day to day. They figure out the little fixes that manuals and training never mention. Same thing happened to me at a rental house last year. Tenant showed me how the motion detector in their hallway would trip if the sun hit the window just right around 4pm - that was a blind spot sensor placement never accounted for. The whole 'expert vs. user' dynamic is wild. We come in thinking we know the product inside out, but they know how it behaves in their weird specific house over a whole year. Kinda humbling when you sit back and think about it. Customers arent always right, but sometimes theyve been living with the problem longer than youve had the answer.