A customer's 6 AM phone call changed my whole approach to face frames

Last spring I had a guy named Doug call me at 6 AM, before I even had coffee, furious about a gap he saw on his new upper cabinet door. He said, 'I can see light through the seam, you must have used a bad hinge.' I drove over, and it was the door itself, slightly warped from the cheap MDF he insisted on to save $200. I swapped in a plywood panel, no charge, and he watched me level it with a dial indicator I got from a flea market. Has anyone else had a customer blame hardware first, when the real issue is the material they picked out themselves?

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lopez.simon24d ago

Guy called me one time about a crooked drawer front, swore up and down the slides were junk. Turned out he'd stored the whole cabinet in his damp garage for a month and the particle board swelled like a sponge. But sure, blame the hardware, that's the easy target. Doug sounds like a real gem too, saving two hundred bucks on MDF then acting shocked when it acts like MDF. You basically gave him a free lesson in why cheap materials cost more in the long run. Some people just need to see the light through the seam before they get it.