Samick Pianos

[EHILBERT@midd.middlebury.edu]

Dear Arlie<
      I can't relate specifically to the Samick Pianos you are seeing, but
I can tell you that a similar sales approach is done in our part of the country,but usually with
pianos produced by Kimball under different names.
      It works like this:  A dealer out of Pennsylvania places ads in local
newspapers from time to time telling you to call their 800 number if you would
be interested in getting a good deal on a "repossed piano".  People call the
800 number, give their name, telephone number, address, etc. to the
secretary, and are told that they will be contacted soon when the truck will
be up in their area.
      The truck arrives in the area and the trucer calls and says he will
be over in a few minutes to an hour, or so.  He backs the truck up to the
house so that the people can climb in the back and see what he has to offer.
Sometimes there are used pianos on the truck, but most are as you described,
new "repossessd" pianos.  Amazing to me, but they come with new warranties
that have never been filled out before, and the benches are even still in
their boxes.  It would seem that the previous customer didn't sit down to
play!
      I asked one customer, who was describing this to me if it didn't
seem strange that the truck driver was having to put the bench together out
of the box if the piano had been in someone elses house?  She said she had
wondered the same thing and asked him about it.  He responded that the
previous owner had an old bench from a previous piano that they liked and so
they never used this new one.  So how come he was putting it together for her
without first asking if she wanted it put together?
      I think you can see that this is somewhat of a scam operation.
Make the custome think they are getting a good price on a practically new
piano as a result of someone else's bad luck in having it repossessed.  Of
the new pianos we have seen, none was terrible, some are actually fairly
decent for inexpensive pianos, but all of them cost more than they should
have cost, in my opinion.  One old piano was a disaster with a shot pinblock.
The customer was a lawyer and had demanded that the driver write on the
receipt a guaranty.  After a lot of hemming and hawing the driver finally did
Good thing because the company wasn't going to stand behind the piano at all.
But she made them look up the bill of sale and they could see that the driver
 had (broken their rules) written in a guartanty.  So the company gave up
its threat to send the collection agency after her and told her she didn't
have to pay any more.  They didn't bother to return her deposit though.  As
for the piano, they left it with her.  Unfortunately she later passed in on
to someone else who later called us for advice on how to fix it.
      On one of the new pianos, we did some warranty work and the company
did make good on repaying the customer, based on our bill to her.
      So that's the quick and dirty of it.  Sell it under false pretenses,
sell it on the spur of the moment in their driveway, out of the back of the
truck (great acoustics!), and with at least one customer, in the dark by
flashlight!  That truck driver must be one heck of a good salesman!!
Ed Hilbert, RPT
Vermont