Are there such things as bad customers?

It always goes very similarly with good customers, so there is only one category for them. 

They contact me, tell me who they are and what they need done.

 I ask relevant questions and try to get a clear picture of the situation. 

They are friendly and cooperative because their goal is for me to fix their issue. 

They allow me to take the lead in the situation and work together with me to achieve their goal. 

I give them a price and all related details before I start. They pay me when I'm done.

Simple and easy.

Symptoms of bad customers are listed here:

- Customers who feel like they are the most important people in the world and my time isn't worth 10% of theirs. 

They will require that I come before or after normal business hours but have no problem being late when I am waiting for them. 

They tend to behave as if I am the one who contacted them and I am there to grovel for work or prove myself, like a job interview. 

They do not show any gratitude for a free estimate and tend to behave like I am obligated to provide it.  

- Customers who are very controlling and have no concept of personal space or respect for professional service providers.

They go far beyond choosing colors, styles or original gameplans. 

They often want to plan everything for me and use me as the 'dumb muscle' for their project. 

They are unnecessarily strict about timing, scheduling and anything they can think of to be 'in charge' of the situation. 

They think it is normal to 'supervise' me and ask 'how it's going' every 15 minutes. 

If something doesn't go to plan, they still expect it to be my responsibility, as if I planned it.

Customers who 'bait and switch' or 'turn it over' to someone else after the project has started. 

They fall under the description of the 'good customers' but then someone else jumps in to fill the 'bad customer' role, after I start. 

This is typically a husband or wife who is friendly and easy-going through the contract/agreement process and then the other half jumps in with a completely different attitude. 

Another example is people flipping/managing houses who 'turn it over' to their partner or a realtor.

Customers who have 'been burned' before.

They have had bad experiences with contractors before and they expect that to be an acceptable excuse to be super untrusting and treat me like an ex convict. 

They expect me to understand that they are going to treat me as if I'm not to be trusted because some person I have never met did a bad job. 

Customers who only want the estimate and have no intention of actually having me do the work.

 Many people contact me and pretend to be serious just so I will tell them how to do something or to get an insurance claim that they plan to pocket or won't get. 

  Obviously this is not a smart use of my time, so I always have to be wary of this common issue. 

Customers often want me to explain every aspect of a project and what it would entail. Some get frustrated when I do not do this. 

Slum Lords, shady 'property managers' and other people with unrealistic expectations.

They tend to have all of the the symptoms above but ALSO want it done especially cheap, because they promise more work in the future. 

They will talk like upstanding citizens who are super legitimate business people and then send me to a crack house that has been in disrepair for years.

 When I tell them the state of the place and the years of bad repairs that have been done, they pretend I just don't know what I'm talking about.

Slumlords are dishonest people who hold communities back and I don't like them. 

Now ask yourself: If you had to deal with all the symptoms of bad customers on a daily basis, wouldn't that be a terrible life? 

Why would you even do it?

The smartest thing for me to do is to use my years of experience to foresee bad situations and avoid them.