Crutchfield: The Podcast Ep 58

Bill Crutchfield started Crutchfield in 1974 and it was not a hit right away. It was a good idea, he knew that. But do-it-yourself car stereo was not exactly a thing in the mid 70s and people were scared to attempt to install a new stereo or speakers or amplifier themselves.

He knows this because he talked to his relatively few customers and to people that had not yet bought anything. He actually sent them a questionnaire and the feedback he got was a pivotal moment in the 50-plus year history of Crutchfield. In response to this feedback Bill started putting a ton of helpful information in the catalog, started carrying installation accessories, started taking his own pictures of the products, providing written technical info from reputable sources and, and this is a big one, he started offering technical support from his phone.

And I do mean his phone. He was so eager to help his customers that he even had a remote phone extension installed in his bedroom so he could literally help people with their installs any time of day or night. Today we have around 70 people doing tech support for Crutchfield customers.

They all work in one of our two call centers, both of which are in Virginia. And boy, do they have some stories. On today's show we bring you stories from tech support.

From Crutchfield headquarters in beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia, this is Crutchfield the Podcast. I'm your host, JR. Crutchfield tech support in 2025 is way more than car stereo installation support. That's still the majority of calls.

People installing stereos, speakers, amp subs, dash cams, etc. in their car. But we carry a lot more than just car stereo stuff these days and if we sell it, we support it.

TVs, home theater, record players, cameras, drones, smart home, networking products, headphones, and so much more. Our techs bring a lot of varied life experiences and passions to their job. Some of them specialize in certain areas, some are generalists, some speak Spanish.

So the stories you will hear in today's episode will cover all sorts of products. I think you'll find as you listen to our techs tell their stories that they enjoy what they do, especially when they know they've helped someone figure it out, whatever it is for them. We're gonna start with Joe.

Joe is one of our tech support trainers and works in our Southwest Virginia call center. I got hired at Crutchfield in 2008. We were, well, the country of course was going through a little bit of a recession right after that and we were still very busy at the time.

And it's been quite a journey. I've been in tech support since day one. I'm still in tech support and I've loved it.

It's great. In addition to training new hires, Joe still takes calls and works with customers, especially when things get busy, like right after the holidays. I spoke to Joe in mid January right after the holidays.

It scratches my itch for helping people. I get to basically just get new problems every day and just get to approach things and be creative sometimes in finding problem solutions or solutions to problems. And a lot of times I get to talk to such awesome and amazing people who are just really enthusiastic and excited to play with the gear that they just got.

Do you get customers that are, I mean, obviously most of the people calling you have a problem, right? Yeah. And they need it fixed and they've probably called a tech support service of some kind. They've sought help for a problem with a service or a product that they have acquired or purchased elsewhere and they've experienced tech support at other companies.

Do you get the feeling that they are expecting this to be a subpar experience? Very often, especially if it's their first time actually calling us, a lot of people have that expectation of what a support experience is because of what they've experienced elsewhere. And very often we're able to just blow that expectation out of the water and operate so much better than what they're expecting. With a lot more information, a lot more effort.

I actually had a guy the other day who was just blown away by just the amount of time I was spending to dig into why something was not matching up in his car to what we actually expected to be in our system. He actually had a Mini Cooper and the wiring in his car was totally different. Previously it was a lease.

So our theory is that the dealership had actually pulled out the Nisr sound system that was in the car originally and put in a very basic sound system but left some of the wiring in there from the Nisr system. So the wire colors matched up to the Nisr one but what was actually in the car was the very basic system. There's no amp.

The customer was awesome. He went back to where the factory amp would be, took some pictures, sent them in to me. And we're looking in that cavity, no amplifier in there at all.

And he was just... I was like a dog with a bone. I wanted to figure it out. And he was just, after so long, he was just kind of blown away by the fact that I was just not letting this go and wanting to figure out and make sure I knew exactly what it was that he had before I told him what to do.

As far as, hey, to get your audio signal to your amplifier, we're gonna have to grab these speaker wires here, here, and here. And here's how you're gonna need to test it to verify that what I'm thinking is going on is actually what's going on. And it's great because we're able to do that kind of stuff and blow people out of the water that way.

And you have to go deeper than just using the tools that we, you guys all know how to use, right? We've got the wire colors for most of the wires and most of the cars, but there are situations where the information we have doesn't match and then you've got to really dig deep, huh? All the information in our system is based on our research and what we dug in and found out and documented. And of course, we've not been able to go through and do research on every single variation of everything out there, unfortunately. So sometimes we do have to pivot and go into kind of a research mode to figure it out.

Sometimes we're using that and referencing variations of it that's in our system to figure out if it matches anything that we have. Or sometimes it's digging into some extra in-depth resources that we can dig into that sometimes are incomplete, sometimes not. It's always an adventure whenever we have to do that, of course, but we do a great job that diving into those things.

How often do you get to work with customers on cars that are kind of exotic? Man, not a ton. They do come in from time to time. I actually had a little bit of a whiplash in this holiday season.

Holiday season is your busy season, right? Yes, we are incredibly busy because everyone just got their presents and they're excited, they're psyched, and they have questions about it or running into trouble with it. Most of the time, it's just questions about, hey, how do I do this? I went, I had some whiplash where one call was about helping a guy putting a stereo into a 94 Ford pickup. One of your basic, very common, most common trucks out there.

That doesn't exactly sound exotic. It is not. It's the opposite of exotic.

Yes, it's still a great truck, of course. I mean, I'm an F-150 owner, so I get it, and I've never been described as exotic. Yeah, I did have, my next call was exotic, though.

It was a Maserati, and yes, it was great, and like, it wasn't something that we actually have in our system. Like, I even looked in our system. I think we have one Maserati in our system at all right now, so hopefully, that's going to be adding, changing, and being added to, too, because during the course of the call, this customer, can I actually say the customer's first name? First name would be fine, yeah.

Okay, first name was Don. Don was awesome, and I gotta give him a shout out because of that, because he was just so awesome and patient. He, it didn't expect us to actually have a lot of information on it, but thankfully, a lot of these exotic cars are European based, and a lot of the European cars keep a very common theme with their wiring.

Thankfully, they don't go too crazy with things, so most the time, it's just getting pictures of what's actually in the car, and kind of comparing that to what we have in our system, and his was very common to a Volkswagen, so after doing some digging, and he sent me some diagrams that he'd actually been able to find on his own. Another reason why Don was so awesome to work with. He was just so willing to share everything that he had found.

He was a real DIYer in digging into those things, and we were able to figure it out. I found in the right harnesses, and everything that he needed to know to wire it up, and get the radio going into his car. So Don was looking to replace the radio in the dash of his Maserati? That was his project? Yep, that was a fun one.

He was putting a pretty good little Alpine radio in there. And for, and in most situations, when we don't have any info on the car, the customer should prepare to like cut wires, and solder, or connect the new wires from the new radio to the vehicle's wires. But you helped Don avoid that? Yes.

Thankfully, we were able to avoid that. We didn't even need to break out the meter or anything. In a lot of cases, where it's an exotic car, and we don't know what's up in the car, sometimes we have to break out a meter, do some measurements to find the power and ground wires, and to find the speaker wires.

Sometimes we have to go digging around in the car to see if there's a factory amp somewhere, and dig into the audio system to see if it's labeled as anything like Harman Kardon, or Infinity, or Boseus. Yeah, those extra nice audio systems, of course, add in factory amplifiers. So, when there's a factory amp in the car, that puts another aspect of it that we need to figure out how, or if, we can even integrate into that factory amp.

Or if we just need to straight-up bypass it. And a lot of times that's the case. And you were able to match up the plug that was in the car from the factory to a plug that we have for Volkswagen cars, is that right? Yeah.

Yeah, it actually ended up being a very common Volkswagen harness. So, it worked out really well, luckily, that time, thankfully. I guess that would make sense, right? Like, Maserati is not exactly like a car stereo company, right? Like, that's not the focus.

When they're building a car, that stereo has to be somewhat of an afterthought, or something they are willing to not R&D themselves, right? Like, let's just go get something that somebody else made and put it in, because we're focusing on engine performance and exhaust performance, and we're gonna make the car run right. And if you want to listen to music, I guess you can, but that's not why you buy a Maserati, right? No, you buy it to listen to that engine sound and that engine purr. I can only imagine what those things sound like and run like.

That would be amazing to drive one. The only thing better than talking to a curious, problem-solving tech support agent that helps you solve your problem is not having to call tech at all. Joe's got a few tips to help you solve your own problems.

Read the instructions, and I'm not talking about the paper instructions that come with the gear, but we actually provide a lot of great custom instructions and information with the order. You can pull it up on the website, look at your order, and there will be like an order status, and the car orders very often will have a installation details page that will actually give you a wire guide, kind of a overview of everything that needs to be connected up, any wiring that needs to be done, especially if you didn't get our ready harness service where we actually wired up before we ship it out to you. That installation overview page actually does a great job with even providing some helpful, hey, do your install in this order, like get your things together, here's some tools that you're gonna need, here's some warnings, and then even after that, there's even some tech tips of frequently asked questions related to the gear that's actually on your order and your car.

We've actually got some tets, and those things are actually put together by tets, like my co-workers here, heavily involved with that to put those things together for customers. So that is actually one place that we actually provide a ton of great useful information that can actually prevent needing to call us for help in so many cases. I love that tip number one is read the instructions.

Yes. I'm guessing tip number two is going to be unplug it and plug it back in. Is that tip number two or no? Very often just rebooting things, unplugging it, plugging it back in.

Very often that does fix problems, so that probably should be number two. I mean, that was kind of half joking, but it really does fix problems, doesn't it? It really does. It really does, whether it's the home audio gear, car audio gear.

Very often just turning something off and back on, whether it's your car stereo, your home stereo, your TV, your phone even. Sometimes if you're having trouble getting your phone to work with something correctly, just rebooting your phone fixes a lot of issues. Of course, making sure everything's up to date is another good step with that.

Joe's last tip is one that all of the techs that I talked to for this episode gave me. A few years ago, we started offering a service called Ready Harness. This is for car stereos.

Instead of you, the customer, having to connect a bunch of wires on the back of your new car stereo to the wires in your vehicle-specific wiring harness, we'll do it for you. If you're not someone who likes to do a lot of wiring and stuff, like you don't like to do all the connecting of wires together, I totally understand. It's kind of frustrating and can sometimes be very overwhelming, especially with some of the harnesses that we have that have so many wires and functionalities and options for that.

I would recommend to use our pre-wire service, the Ready Harness service that I mentioned earlier. If your order qualifies for it, either an advisor will offer it or the website will automatically offer it whenever you're adding everything to your cart and you pick your installation gear. It'll automatically offer it to you if you're eligible for it, which I feel like about 80% of the cars out there are eligible for it since like 1990.

So we've got a large number of cars where that's eligible and able to be done. That is money well spent, letting us put all the wires or most of the wires together for you. When you go to do your car stereo install, it's so much easier.

It really is, and they do such a great job of that. We have, of course, being a tech support, whenever there's a problem with it, we get a call on it, of course. So we hear about it.

We have such a low error rate with those things, whether it's us not making a connection good enough or if it's us accidentally hooking up the wrong wire to the wrong wire somehow, we have such a low, incredibly low error rate on those things. And of course, we do a lot of great quality control and feedback and training on the people who do those things. So whenever we do find something, we pass it along, we report it, they review it, and improve.

They're always trying to improve. I actually have a bit of a hand in developing even some of the logic that they, or I'm helping mold or develop it further, some of the logic that they're using for that ReadyHarness service to make sure that we're recommending everything correctly and getting everything done. We're trying to be very agile with that, with developing it.

Because new harnesses are coming out, we're, of course, always having to update things and make sure that everything's up to date with that. They do an amazing job. We've got a great crew downstairs who do that, and they just sit there listening to their music, just jamming out, and just go to town on those things all day long.

I love it. I kind of want to do it sometimes. You want to actually get your hands busy? Yes, yes.

Sometimes working on the keyboard and mouse all day long does get old. So it'd be nice to get my hands busy with some things sometimes. How often do you feel like you just want to get in a truck and go to the customer's house and just do the thing for them? So often, so often.

Because very often, like, there might be something that needs to be done, and I know exactly how to describe it and stuff, but I could do it so much easier very often. Because it's so much easier to do something very often than to actually tell someone how to do it. Especially someone who doesn't do that day in, day out, every day.

An art form indeed. That's Joe, our tech trainer. Next, I'd like you to meet Victor.

I went to school for computer electronics, and I had an associate's in that, and ended up just, you know, coming here, enjoying, just doing what I've always done, just helping people out with tech. I've always been the go-to person for everything. You're like tech support for your family and stuff? Basically, so yeah, they always ask me, you know, how does this work? How do you fix this? And even at the age of 13, I've been doing that.

Yeah, yeah, that's... Do you find, like, the older people in your life call you a lot more for some fairly basic things? Yes, I'm the hero when it comes to unplugging and plugging back in the tech. So you're the second one of these I've done, and unplugging and plugging back in has come up so far in both interviews. I have a feeling that's going to be a theme, because it really does help fix problems a lot of the time.

It does. It genuinely does, and it's just, you know... Victor has the sweetest story about helping a man and his Spanish-speaking wife get their home theater receiver up and running. Home theater receivers are some of the most complex home products we deal with.

They have a ton of inputs and outputs on the back and a complex menu with a ton of customizability, so you can really make movies sound big and awesome, just like at the theater. With all of that capability comes a learning curve, and so tech support is always ready to help our customers get their movies playing. So a customer called in about it is having issues with ARC.

ARC. ARC stands for Audio Return Channel, and it's a function of the HDMI connection that allows your home theater to give you surround sound from apps built into your TV without needing an extra cable. It's a very handy feature, but it can be finicky.

We've gone through all the settings and just verified everything is good on their end. And when I wanted to have them get up and, you know, let's look at the back of the receiver, let's make sure everything's good there, they informed me that they recently had surgery, so they can't get up at all. And I totally understood, and I decided to ask, you know, is there anyone there that can help you? And they said that their wife is there, but they only speak Spanish.

Luckily enough for them, you know, I was able to fluently speak Spanish just fine. And I talked with her. We spent a good amount of time on the phone, and we figured some things out to try and ended up getting everything working.

She passed the phone over back to her husband, and in his words, he thought it was genuinely beautiful to see that his wife was able to speak to just, you know, a random tech support agent. Being able to get all the help that he could through her, he genuinely was just so happy to be able to see all of this happen, and just did not expect this level of tech support from us. I'm not sure if any of them has received a message from him, because he said he was going to send in a message about that, but he definitely wanted to make sure that he's genuinely shocked at how well we provide service here.

And are you officially part of our international department? Oh, not the international department itself, no. I'm just Spanish tech, strictly Spanish tech. It's just known that you are able to do tech in Spanish.

Correct. I'm one of the two techs in our department that are able to speak Spanish. It's pretty fun to get a customer on the line who is doing something a little different, a little out of the ordinary, with some relatively ordinary audio gear.

Well, I had a recent customer build a little bit of an out of the ordinary setup. So they called in about a radio, and they were going on about how they were just not getting any kind of audio out of it. And I asked them, you know, what kind of speakers you've got, told me normal kind of speakers.

And then it got to the point where I wanted to ask about factory vehicle wiring, because they didn't have an amp, they were just going straight to the speakers. And they told me they're not using a car. So I got a little bit more confused.

And they said that they have this in their room, in their actual bedroom, and they have it connected to a 12-volt supply system, and decided to just hook up four speakers all in the corners of their room. Instead of getting a home theater receiver, they just decided to get a car stereo receiver. And just have, you know, a little bit of an experiment.

They wanted something out of the ordinary, they didn't want to be normal, and they were just, they were happy. I thought it was pretty cool. So they knew that what they wanted to do was kind of weird.

They did, they did. It was almost as if they were anticipating for me to ask what vehicle they had. Because they kind of had a moment, and just were like, it sounded like they were holding back laughter.

I think they were just so excited to just call in about something just out of the ordinary as well. And I thought it was really nice. It sounds like it could almost be a prank call, but not like a real call.

He's probably got his friends sitting around going, wait, I'm going to call Crutchfield Tech Support. Wait till they ask me what car this is going, and it's going to be funny. And then this.

Then this. And they were happy. What was the problem? The problem ended up being that they forgot to make the connections behind the stereo.

They had everything hooked up as far as power, and they had their speaker wires right behind the radio itself, just kind of lying there, unconnected. It was at the ready, but they just failed to realize that all of their speakers were not connected at all. Okay, so just an incomplete installation is really all that.

Incomplete, essentially. So pretty easy fix for you, I would say. Super easy, super easy.

We spent some time just talking about it. He just kept going on about how he was just so happy to just be not normal about it, I guess. I was impressed with the way he just set everything up, too.

He routed the wires appropriately, hid them in the corners of the room, and just overall, it sounded great to them, so I was happy to hear that. That was the incredibly smart, talented, and compassionate Victor. Next, we're going to talk to Casey.

My name's Casey. I work over in tech support. I've been here going on 12 years now.

In his 12 years at Crutchfield, Casey has spent some time in tech, and in sales, and then back in tech, where he has stayed. And he really seems to enjoy... Helping people. You know, to hear the proverbial light bulb just go off when somebody really gets what's going on and what they're trying to accomplish, or the sound of just pure excitement for hearing their brand-new speakers for the first time, or setting up a home theater system.

I really enjoy that. And one thing that's a really, really common phone call is Audio Return Channel. They want to get their smart apps running through their home theater receiver.

And TVs, for the most part, that comes on by default, but you have to go into the receiver. And this is something they've been trying to figure out on their own, or dealing with it for a day or two. And it's just, they're bowling over, and they're frustrated, and they call in.

Oh, you just need to do this? It was that simple? Yes, sir. Most of the time, they just, you know, they're just on cloud nine. Is that the most common tech support call involving home products? Is it something to do with Audio Return Channel? Audio Return and networking.

Getting it hooked up to their home network so they can do PEOs, or music cast, or something like that. But that's probably one of the most common. Some of the most interesting calls we receive happen late at night.

On Friday nights, usually. So, this was early on in my career. I think about 2012 or so.

Maybe 13. This is when we were open until midnight. And I got this call.

It was about 9 o'clock. That's when things kind of started to taper down in the evening. This girl calls in.

She's kind of young, and I think it was an early 2000s Corolla, if I'm remembering correctly. So, very straightforward installation. Just a standard harness.

Nothing really difficult as far as a dash kit. But she calls in, and she's like, Hey, I've got a problem. I bought a stereo for my boyfriend, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

I'm like, okay. I was like, we can help with that. She's like, I hope you've got some time.

I was like, it's a little late in the evening. I was like, we're okay. We'll get through it.

And so, we begin. And we go color by color connecting up the wiring harness. We get that done.

And, you know, moving on to the dash kit. Luckily, she's got pretty good instructions to come with it, but I'll help walk her through getting that connected as well. And it comes to time to put everything in the dash, and she's like, here we go.

First, let me back up a little bit. So, she'd never done this before, and she was telling me, she's like, okay, and it's 9 o'clock at night. And to make things a little more interesting, she's like, I'm in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven.

What? She's installing this in the parking lot of a convenience store. Did you ask her why she was doing this in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven? Well, at the end of the conversation, she let me know, after everything was up and running, that she wanted to do this without her boyfriend knowing. She kind of, you know, stole his car and, you know, ran away and was putting this in.

That way, when he gets up in the morning to go to work at 4 a.m., that she was going to have it filled with balloons for his birthday present. That way, he'd get in and have a brand new stereo. So, all he knows is she's run on a snack run.

Right, right. I mean, it was a pretty lengthy snack run. I think it took us about an hour and a half, two hours.

It was definitely, I'm sure he was very appreciative when he woke up and saw his new radio. So, she got it in? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It took us a little bit of time, but she was persistent and followed direction and got it done.

Man, that is the coolest. So, not only a first timer, but like probably an only timer, right? Probably. And just doing it out of the love for her boyfriend and wanting to surprise him.

The stereo itself is cool, right? I mean, if you're a boyfriend and you get like a new stereo for your birthday or whatever, I mean, that's pretty darn cool. But to have it installed for you, I can't think of anything better. Right, and I mean, that just has to take it to the next level.

And the fact, I hope she told him she done it in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. I mean, that's just a conversation in itself. Isn't there a ZZ Top that has a song about something in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven? I think so, yeah.

If we were willing to pay for copyrights, I would play that song right now on this podcast, but we're not. So, you're going to have to go look it up yourself there, listeners. That would have been fun if you had talked about what's the song she's going to have playing on the stereo when he opens the door and the balloons come out and music's playing.

That would have been nice to know that. Oh, yeah. It was definitely my favorite phone call of all time, for sure.

Our last story is a bit different than the rest. Okay, I'm Sylvia. I've lived in Virginia most of my life.

I started out, I was in the military for four years and went from the military to being a DOD contractor. What she didn't mention was that she was a rocket scientist. Did that for quite a while.

That didn't mesh too well with having six kids though, so I ended up being a livestock cattle manager. We had a beef cattle operation at the time, so I did that for quite a few years and then we sold our cattle and I didn't have anything to do to keep me off the streets. I got a notification that Crutchfield was looking for people and I'm a longtime Crutchfield customer so it just made sense to see just kind of dip my toes in and see how it would go and I've been here for almost a year.

Almost a year. How is it going so far? How do you like it? Pretty well. I work with some amazing people.

I work with some really, really sharp people. The customers are great. I enjoy working with the customers but it's really nice to be surrounded by smart, supportive people.

It's I don't know if it's an anomaly or not in the world but it feels like it is and I understand why so many people stay here as long as they do and why they're as passionate about working for Crutchfield as they are. What do you like about doing tech support with customers? I have always been a puzzle solver so that kind of hits that puzzle solving niche for me but some of the customers are just an absolute blast to work with so that's just icing on the cake when you've got somebody that wants to learn, is excited about learning. Like so many of the techs I talk to Sylvia absolutely loves that moment when the customer she's helping finally gets music playing on their new stuff.

It's a triumphant moment when they have both figured it out together. It is highly rewarding. I get excited when I hear audio when I say turn it on see what happens and you hear music.

I get a kick out of that so that's kind of been that little part of my brain that gets that just enjoys that puzzle solving and then that immediate tangible response when I hear audio. I've known I know that we did it. Or the customer did it.

You're the second person I've spoken to that has mentioned that moment. It's just their voices they've customers created this environment where this happens so they're excited, I'm excited and I'll be you can probably see me right here my hands going I get a kick out of hearing that. It just checks a little box for me in my brain so I don't know why but that's how it is.

Enough about how amazing Sylvia is let's get to her story already. What you emailed me that you wanted to talk about was not the typical helping a customer over the phone type of story you have some sort of side project going on for revivethedrive.org can you tell me more about this? So revivethedrive.org is the brainchild of one of my children's basically college roommates my oldest son and Wes who's the motivation behind revive the drive he tells the story about buying a vehicle from a family that he's basically going to flip vehicles but the family ended up needing the vehicle long story short TLDR, he got the vehicle running and got it back to the family to the original family and they were so grateful so that kind of started him on the thing where he thought it was important and he had the skill set to help provide donated vehicles to people in the Richmond area families in the Richmond area that didn't have reliable transportation and also include some support because as most of us know that buying a vehicle or acquiring a vehicle is just part of it there's always maintenance, there's always certain things to do you've just started spending money yes exactly and my son was concerned about one of the vehicles that was donated because it's a Tahoe and it didn't have a backup camera and he thought that giving a vehicle of that size probably to a family it was just not a wise position to be in to provide that kind of a vehicle to a family if it didn't have a backup camera so that's what started it all yeah that's a sure way to get kids bikes run over exactly or a fender bender in the parking lot exactly which is just another expense of driving, let's help them avoid that too yeah and the other thing is that hands free so many jurisdictions are now requiring hands free operation we said okay let's replace the head unit as well we're going to be in there the vehicle had been a work vehicle so it had some couple of the speakers had been removed and we weren't certain about the other ones so I contacted Chrissy here at Crutchfield and I presented what we had going on and she was a huge help and she got it going so we assembled a head unit speakers and a backup camera for this donated Tahoe so we did the install, we did most of the install and another benefit of this whole process is that I get to be reminded of what our customers go through good and bad so it was freezing anytime I've done an install I've had the luxury of doing it when I wanted and I know I've talked to customers that were like my kid's home on Christmas break, I've got to get this done today I've got a deadline and I can't leave the dash open it's got to happen so we were operating under that premise we got everything basically going but it's 5 o'clock we're freezing the dash is still open some of the modifications that had been made to the vehicle we needed to have a little bit more information on Wait, did you call tech support during this installation? I did not, no I would have been mortified I thought about it I did think about it especially when we got into it was funny in this Tahoe the rear door speakers the harness had been cut and everything and we said it's brown yellow in this door and it's brown yellow in that door what are the chances they're going to be the same polarity so we did that and then I get back to the computer and go, no, they would reverse the polarity so we've got to go back and fix that but we have to do the microphone and then the USB port that's one that customers always ask about so it's like ok, we've got to solve this problem so we got it all done, tested, working but we still have to finish assembling it, so we didn't have a deadline hopefully within the next month we will have it all done and the vehicle's not quite ready to go out yet, so there's no we're not holding up the revive the drive folks with the install Do we have time for one more story? Yeah, I think we do and this is the perfect story to end on I was surprised how many of these tech support stories were just normal, none of them required some crazy hours long troubleshooting session these were stories of average everyday people hooking up their new stereo, their new TV their new speakers and they just weren't quite sure what to do the basics I love that we have so many customers buying and hooking up their first stereo I have one from yesterday Let's do it You want to do it right now? We have three minutes left in our scheduled time Alright, so Home Audio I'm guessing this gentleman was older he had purchased a CD player a receiver and some speakers and he said they were sitting in the box and he wasn't sure what to do with them he said he finally got up the nerve to take them out of the box and so many Home Audio people did Home Audio in the 70s and 80s when they were in college and now they're coming back to it and it's a lot different so he was very intimidated by that but he said he got everything opened, he got it unpacked and then he called and he got me he said what do I do and whoever the sales advisor was had sent him everything he needed and we went through and I told him how to strip wire with a box knife how to get wire into a binding post and send me pictures that's right, yep, that's good that came disconnected, send me pictures and he was so much fun to work with I feel like I should call him back and ask him what it was he was listening to because he finally got his CD going he was so happy but he was like what do I do with this wire and I'm like he cut it in half stripped back a quarter inch it goes in the binding post there this one goes in that binding post he was ecstatic, he was so kind he was patient with me I love it he was so happy it was contagious it really was contagious he was such a wonderful man maybe you'll speak with Sylvia or Victor, Casey, Joe or any of the other wonderful people we have doing some of the most rewarding work there is to do at Crutchfield thank you to all the techs that volunteered their time and their stories for this podcast it's clear to me that it is a well we should be returning to on a regular basis if you are still listening you are my hero here's some last little tidbits for you we'd love to answer your questions about consumer electronics right here on Crutchfield the podcast no question is too big or too small you can send us your questions via email at podcast at crutchfield.com or just hit us up on one of our socials Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc in March we'll be talking to our vehicle research team to explain to the world how we know so much about your car and what stereo, speakers, subs and amps will work to make whatever you listen to while you drive like this podcast maybe, sound amazing and as always thank you to Bill Crutchfield for paying us to talk about the coolest gear on the planet we do this show from Crutchfield headquarters in beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia we'll see you in a month