More on YAMAHA Service Bond Service

[RndyPotter@aol.com]

>Thanks Randy for Your excellent and informative post.

>As someone who has worked both sides of the fence (as a dealer technician
>for many years, and now as the head of the service department for the local
>Yamaha dealer) I agree with all that you've said.

>One small point though.  In the above quote it looks like dealers make out
>like bandits on these expensive grand sales.  This is simply not the case.
>Please do not forget that on top of all the service and delivery costs, we
>must also pay for such things as offfice staff salaries, store space
>rental, interest on floored pianos, and (if you happen to be a dealer that
>is dedicated to education and public service) the cost of sponsoring
>concerts, recitals, seminars, teacher outreach and so on.  Add to that all
>the other typical business type costs we are all to familiar with, and that
>$15,000 is pretty much gone.

>Piano sales are not the cash cow they might have been in the past.  If I
>can feel like we've sold a excellent piano at a reasonable price, paid the
>bills, educated the customer, given something back to the community, and
>(last but not least) given work at a competitive price to some technicians,
>then, to me, that has been a profitable sale in every sense of the word.

>John McKone, RPT, Operations Manager
>Haugen's Pianos, Twin Cities

Dear John;

I totally agree with you, too. I was simply responding to one (of many) poor
technicians who are being unfairly treated by dealers for some reason.
Perhaps because the dealer is ignorant, or perhaps because he is a little
shifty.
  I, too, have been a dealer. In fact, the reason I no longer sell pianos is
because I learned a long time ago that piano dealers/stores come and go,
while piano technicians never run out of business. Our small town had five
piano dealers before the last "recession" - and then there was one. But while
the stores were going under, and the salesmen losing their jobs and looking
for work in other fields, the technicians continued to service their clients,
and pay their bills.
  I know that dealers do not "make out like bandits on expensive grand
sales", and if I gave that impression to anyone I thank you for bringing it
up and pointing it out. There are, as you so aptly noted, many expenses that
consume much of that profit, whether it is a few hundred dollars on a used
piano or thousands on a larger grand. All of the overhead items you
mentioned, and many more, take big bites out of the bottom line. A survey of
dealers in virtually any part of the hemisphere will show that most are not
making large profits by the end of the year. In fact, in the case of many I
know, they could do better if they sold the business property and put the
money in the stock market! In many cases, it is only their love of this
business, and of pianos, that keeps them from doing so.
  I was simply trying to make the point (with the illustration of the $15K
"profit" on the expensive grand), that this particular dealer had no valid
reason to expect the technician to do $500 worth of work for him for free.
Everyone else got paid, but because many (most, somewhere between 80-90%)
technicians are self-employed, and may fear to lose a dealer's good graces or
business, they are often mis-used (as I feel the original writer, who was
inquiring about payments for Yamaha Service Bond work, was).

Randy Potter, R.P.T.