>>>As a matter of fact my faucet on the bathtub is screwed up right now and doing it. And it is one of those expense ones.<<<
A lot of those newer/better ones are "pressure balanced". They're designed so if you're taking a shower and somebody opens a tap in another part of the house the pressure differential will be noticed and offset automatically by the shower/bath control and the water temperature will remain constant.
They can be tricky bastards. I fought my first one tooth and nail while trying to sweat it in. I thought since I had the mixer tap open it would release the hot air from the sweat and let the solder seal the joint. Nope.
After about 5 pinhole leaks, I figure out what was happening.
Anyway, that was a good write-up you did for Fred. We'll make a plumber out of him yet.
Can you imagine that "plumber" that came out there, and didn't run through the steps you've described. It's not rocket science. These guys don't want to work. They don't want to think. They just want to replace something/anything and move on. It's pitiful.
And then on the other hand, you get a good smart well-rounded guy like the one N.B. describes, who actually takes some initiative and does some trouble shooting and trial and error stuff and ends up screwing something up in the process and the homeowner get pissy about that.
I'm not saying you got pissy, N.B.. I'm sure you were a good sport about it, but it does happen and it does put a damper on service people using their imagination at all, and wanting to limit their work to fixing/replacing only obvious problems.