I had a classic stereo experience when I lived in Sydney.
I had a pioneer 4x35W head unit and decided I needed more grunt, so I bought a cheap Sansui 200W amp and 2 boxed 10 inch kicker subwoofers from Strathfield (can't remember the name of the suburb, but it was somewhere between Cronulla and Mascot).
I booked the car in for the next available day, which was about a week from the time I purchased the gear and turned up at the agreed time to be told my car would be ready in 2 hours. 2.5 hours later, I found the car hadn't even made it into the "workshop". After having a non threatening word to the "manager", I was told they had a few jobs that took longer than they thought, and that they would get on to my vehicle right away! It sat there another hour before it was touched.
Eventually, the "apprentice" installer walked up to me and said it was complete, BUT, due to the fact my head unit only had one set of RCA's, they could only wire up the subwoofer and rear speakers in a MONO configuration!!! Not really knowing much about how everything was set up, I had to accept what he was saying. He told me to use the left/right balance to adjust the levels between the rear speaker and subs, which did work, but with a lack of stereo output the clarity was obviously pathetic.
I couldn't be bothered arguing because I was starting my next shift a few hours later and was missing valuable sleep, so I just left in digust.
A few weeks later, I removed the amp and woofer from the boot (the amp was mounted in a spot which made it impossible to adjust any of the settings). Upon inspection I found out that they had correctly installed a splitter to convert 2 to 4 channels, but had simply plugged the cables into the wrong outputs, ie. subs into the left channels, and rear speakers into right channels. I don't know if the "techs" at Strathfield were just lazy and so lied to me, or if they were just plain stupid. They probably realised their mistake, but because of the crap job they did on installing, it would have taken them too long to remove everything to plug the cables in correctly.
Anyway, after switching everything around, and selecting the correct setting on the amp for the subs (which took me a while since they kept all the instruction manuals), I finally got the thing working properly.
My lesson.. the prices were OK for the equipment, as for installation, don't let any of these unqualified butchers anywhere near your car.
Dave