Yamaha keytops

[JIMRPT@aol.com]

Dr. Jim;
"I believe that if I were a manufacturer, and out of the goodness of my heart
I elected to change out a keyboard for one of MY customers."
  Not Yamahas customers-- Jim but 'my' customers and that is where the rub
is. When you help create a desire for a new piano, convince the customer that
Yamaha is what they really want and that a Yamaha grand is what they need,
meet them several times at several different times, sell them a Yamaha grand
and deliver it. Then you provide the free service, tune and service the piano
for several years, whose customer would you call these people?  Yamaha does
not know these people and will never deal with them again. When you have
three Technicians in the area who are more than capable of doing this
exchange it does not make sense to fly someone in from Tennessee to do it. I
am not in the least upset at Yamaha for this, but I think that it is strange
and a heck of a way to do business. At least I was never upset but perhaps I
should be if your reasoning is Yamahas'. Changing a keyboard, as you well
know, is not brain surgery and if Yamaha thinks that I am not qualified to do
it than that is their perogative. I think that it is a path of least
resistance thing where it is mostly a "we've always done it this way" deal.
  I don't happen to think that Yamaha does things relating to keyboard
exchange in a reasonable fashion from my point of view. However looking at it
from Yamahas point of view I can understand if they are  comfortable with
someone else and want to keep that person gainfully occupied. Having one
person collect the data for the new keyboard and then sending a different
person in to make the change does make the first person look less competent
in the eyes of the customer and I have had occasions where this has happened
to me. My only concern on these occasions is that 'my' customer be taken care
of and that the person doing the exchange do no harm. Such has not always
been the case.
  Jim this is not a big issue to me and it is one of the very few areas where
dealing with Yamaha can be disconcerting.  I would rather deal with Yamaha
than almost any other manufacturer.

Jim Bryant (FL)
p.s. It is not out of the "goodness of their heart" that they make these
exchanges! If you have ever seen an Ivorite keyboard that has the problem you
know that their business would truly suffer were they not to do something.