Damn dude I hear that. The best mixing experience I've had was when I was there with the producer for every moment of the mixing process. I crashed at his house/studio for a week straight during the recording and mixing process. Fortunately he's a really good friend and gave me a homie rate of twenty-five an hour, and took a painting of mine as payment. As you can imagine we spent a lot of time together mixing a two hour contemporary jazz album. 10/10 would do again, I was much happier with the result than any of my former recording experiences.
Yeah that's the reality of the situation. If you charge someone a lot of money and it's not absolute shit? They will presume it's good because they're invested in it. If you do a favor for someone, they'll assume that since they put zero effort into it, you put zero effort into it.