What do you call the phenomenon when a professional charges you a consultation fee, but then informs you of everything you already know, and talks to you as if you don’t know anything.
There is a name for this…
A waste of money?
After a few minutes of looking around, nothing is jumping out at me.
Do you have an example? Does the word just show up in one industry or is it used across the board?
Is the word specific to consultation fees, it sounds like you’re looking for ‘condescending’, but that’s a pretty common word.
“Con”, “scam”, “hustle” ?
I am looking for the name of a hustle.
And, every professional has done this to me, doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer technicians, carpenters, plumbers…
Usually, I have to threaten them by with-holding payment before they start giving me useful advise or doing competent work
I am looking for the name, of this particular kind of hustle.
You seem to have had uniquely bad luck.
Oversimplifying? Dumbing down?
I’m not familiar with this as a con or scam, just talking down to someone because you underestimate their level of expertise.
I call it “the initial report.” After you’ve had a chance to digest the situation, I’ll be happy to go over the strategy for moving forward.
Seriously, in my sporadic instances of being a consultant, it usually turns out that “everything you already know”* is not everything that everyone else already knows* and that it’s necessary to get everyone officially on the same page.
I will always remember a situation where my company was briefing an organization’ directors on how to craft a message to articulate their goals. The meeting broke down into an argument over what exactly their goals were. After a half-hour of them arguing with each, my boss said, “Please call us when you agree on why you want us here,” and led us out of the room.
Yes, this seems a little unusual.
OP, can you give us an example of a situation?
A consultant borrows your watch and tells you the time, the term I have heard is padding.
More seriously, it can and often does happen that you know X, everybody else knows X, everybody knows that everybody knows X, but you can’t act on that knowlage until you get an outside expert to come in and say X.
“An expert is someone from out of town.”
I never heard a name for it. And I don’t see how it describes a single situation. Professional tells you something you already ‘knew’. How sure were you before hearing that they agreed? Was it obvious to an honest professional that you would have already known? Etc.
As to consultants in a business setting, it’s rare AFAIK for there not to be people in the organization who claim that whatever the consultant finds was already obvious, among those who agree with the finding that is. For the people who disagree with the finding and particularly those whose position it threatens, the consultant is just wrong. 
And I’ve never been a consultant.
Well, everyone may know X, but the expert knows why X is even a thing worth knowing. They know X, why X is, the multiple distinct situations commonly and collectively (and strictly incorrectly) known as X, and what X means in the larger scheme of things. And that kind of expertise is important because knowledge is much more useful with context.
More to the OP, the term your looking for is “disabusing the client of incorrect beliefs”. It’s not about you, talking down to you. It’s about the expert ensuring his student is beginning with a solid and accurate foundation. About being a professional delivering the services requested to a client properly prepared to receive them.
Except for the rudeness, I think the most anyone can expect from an initial consultation is a general discussion of the problem – not a detailed analysis of specific factors that apply to your case. That’s literally the whole purpose of an initial consultation: to give the client a general understanding of the issue from the professional’s perspective, and not provide detailed solutions or analysis until the client hires their services.
But of course, there’s no call for a professional providing a consultation to be disrespectful.
If you already know what you need to have done, why are you even paying a consulting fee at all? Why don’t you just say, “The sink is backed up. How much to fix it?” Then they fix it and you pay them and that’s that.
- High-level analysis
- Baseline scoping
- Confirmation
and the good old… - Requirements gathering.
Stating the bleedin’ obvious.
Likewise for carpenters. You simple ask for bids on a project. What consulting could they do?
The 80-20 principal. Only about 20 percent (or less ) of professionals in any field are actually competent and the rest are usually coasting.