Small colleges in remote towns

[Kent Swafford]

I have fallen into the habit of spending two days a year at a small college
that is well outside my regular service area.

The college has a local tech that does regular tunings. The college likes
the idea of having an "outside expert" come in regularly, and turned to me
after they found out how much it would cost to have a real Steinway tech
come from New York.  :)

I don't give any sort of discount for my services at this college which
presents a real problem for the local tech, since he _does_ substantially
discount his services. Therefore, I come in and in just two days use up a
rather substantial portion of the annual piano service budget.

I have been approached by a second college to begin providing a similar
service for them. It has been well known for some time that this 2nd college
has had severe difficulties getting its piano satisfactorily taken care of.
While I am sympathetic, there is only so much I can do. Part of the problem
for this college has been that they have not had their pianos tuned often
enough _and_ they have arranged for only tunings of a number of new pianos
that had the normal technical bugs that needed to be worked out.

I will suggest to this 2nd college that any less than 2 tunings per piano
per term is asking for disappointment; I seriously doubt that they would
want to pay my prices for that many tunings. I will probably offer to come
up for 2-3 days to tear into the tech problems and tune 4-6 of their faculty
studio pianos.

For some reason I am having trouble seeing this as anything other than an
unsolvable problem. I was wondering if anyone here had some perspective to
offer from their own similar arrangements.

The most recent message from the 2nd college follows.

Kent Swafford


> Our chair ... here wanted me to get a longer term "game-plan" and have a bid
> before having a person come ... from KS city to do our pianos...  According
> to my count this is the number of pianos we have that need to be serviced...
> 
> Uprights - 21
> Grands - 11 (including one in the recital hall)
> 
> Let me know what your recommendations would be over the long term.  Possibly
> something in conjunction with our local tuner covering part of the time...
> 
> Thanks,