They Charged You Thousands
Two of them you should never pay for again. The third one? Read to the end.
A decade ago, three completely ordinary problems had one thing in common. They all came with an invoice that made you wince.
You wanted to see who was at your front door from your phone. You wanted someone to tell you why the room felt wrong. You wanted a clean professional agreement drafted and signed before a new client engagement started.
Normal things. Reasonable things. All of them routed through a third party who charged for the privilege.
We are talking thousands. Easily. Across a year.
Two of those invoices are gone forever. The third one is more interesting. Stay with me.
The Eufy Security C30 Video Door Phone
The security industry spent decades convincing you that watching your own front door required their infrastructure, their monitoring centre, their monthly contract, and their two-year lock-in. Setup fees. Hardware fees. The quiet hum of a direct debit you barely noticed until you added it up.
One device. One app. Under a hundred euros. No contract. No third party. The footage is yours. Nobody else is watching it.
That entire industry extracted thousands from people who just wanted to see who was knocking. It is over now. Move on.
Have a look at eufy… Link to Shop
The Digital Agreement
In 2015, getting a short professional agreement drafted, signed, and filed meant a lawyer, a billing cycle, a PDF you hoped the other side would print and scan back correctly, and a follow-up email chasing the signed copy. Five hundred euros minimum before the work even started.
Now you describe what you need to Claude or ChatGPT. Retainer, deliverables, payment terms, IP ownership, termination clause. Two minutes. Clean and professional. Send it with Sign.plus or HelloSign. The other party signs on their phone before lunch.
Nobody misses the lawyer for this. Nobody misses the friction. This was never a relationship. It was an inefficiency wearing a suit.
The Interior Designer
Here is where it gets different.
Yes, Gemini will look at your room and tell you what is working and what is not. Yes, it knows the difference between art deco and mid-century modern. Yes, it will answer questions at midnight for free that would have cost you 150 euros an hour in 2015.
Use it. It is genuinely useful.
But a great interior designer is not a third party you tolerate. They are someone with taste, with opinions, with the confidence to tell you that the sofa you love is killing the room. There is banter. There is a point of view you did not have. There is the specific pleasure of working with someone who has spent twenty years developing an eye and is now pointing it at your space.
The AI handles the questions. The human delivers the experience.
The doorbell and the contract were never fun. They were friction. Good riddance. But redesigning a room with someone who actually knows what they are doing? That is still worth the invoice.
Some things were overpriced. Some things were always worth paying for. Knowing the difference is the whole game.
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