...when Joe Homeowner buys a complete package, has no idea of the capabilities other than what some pimply faced, know nothing orange smock "sells" him on, goes home and builds a POS that hinders HA perception when his ridiculous install is shown off to friends and family...
That's exactly why I think this was a horrid deciion on HAI's part. With what little I know about HA, given the entirety of my data is 1 direct experience (mine), everything else being forum-related, this ain't easy stuff. Well, not so bad for those of us willing to throw hours and hours at it, but HD isn't for those folks; it's for the quasi-DIY'ers who are just weekend warriors looking to do something quick.
When they can't get their $500-$1000 in HAI parts to work, or it takes them hours to do something simple, folks aren't going to think "oh, i screwed this up. I"ll call in a $80-$100/hour person to fix it all". They're going to say "yeah, I tried that HAI stuff. Man that stuff is unstable - i had lights turning on randomly for weeks until the wife made me rip it all out."
Or worse - it works, but for their big investment, they'll only have an alternative manual control mechanism (ie, be able to press a button on a screen and turn a light on in a different room cuz their kids left it on). Their buddies who know nothing about this stuff say "yeah, me, I just bought the $10 lightswitches, and beat my kids until they remembered to turn off the light". Nothing about automation, ie motion-based on/off, or auto-off all the correct lights when you arm the system, wait 10 mins until you leave, then turn all the rest off, etc.
Never underestimate 2 things:
1) John Q. Public's (ie, those with a set it & forget it mentality, as oppoosed to the hobbyist) stupidity in installing anything more complex than a toaster. Ever see the length of a list of instructions on a wifi router? My god, who the hell is attempting to install these things that the mfr needs to put in a BIG BOLD WARNING that you need to plug the router in before attempting to connect to it.
2) John Q. PUblic's ability to blame his stupidity on the product at hand, rather than his lack of desire to learn how to do something correctly.