Teacher discounts

[Jim_Harvey@yca.ccmail.compuserve.com]

Recent experiences have caused me to rethink the matter of pricing for
piano teachers. Part of my concern is something I read about
manufacturers, dealers, teachers and technicians putting aside their
personal agendas and sticking together for the good of the whole. This
is due in part as a result of the continuing lack of support for public
music education, and the resulting negative downstream effects on the
piano industry (manufacturing/sales/education/service). Further, my
informal survey indicates that piano teachers are second only to piano
technicians in not keeping their rates current. In other words, and in
my area, it becomes a hardship on teachers to have tuning/service done
at the intervals they would *like* to observe.

I've not provided discount considerations for piano teachers in a long
time. Instead, I have elected to provide a little extra service for the
same price as others pay, providing it is not too time or cost
intensive. This approach on my part was originally developed for
several reasons:

- teachers who were not concerned with regular service;
- teachers who did not significantly offset any discount
  considerations with referrals or additional work;
- a one-price policy was easier for me to track.

However, I've recently encountered several piano teachers (in
differing geographical locations) who are not only dedicated to the
cause, they're deadly serious about all the peripheral matters of
their work. If I fail to contact them about tuning, they're on the
phone rattling my cage. They request more frequent tunings than
before. They're more particular about smaller issues than before, such
as voicing, regulation, and touch -- even on a per-note basis.
Finally, this "attitude" carries over to their students' instruments.
In spite of not providing discounts, I'm getting referrals like never
before!

Before someone says "leave well enough alone and be happy about it",
I'm starting to feel that, considering the opening paragraph, I
should do my part in promoting this (new to me) attitude.

Discuss the above statements as much as you wish, but I'd like some
responses to specific questions. Before anyone gets bent out of shape,
I'm not asking for tuning or service prices, instead am curious about
pricing policies. To keep the responses from going astray of the scope
of the inquiry, I created the following list. (Sorry about the "test"
approach).


__ 1. Do you normally provide discounts for piano teachers?
__ 2. If "yes", is it only because they are teachers - not
      based on referrals?
__ 3. Do you provide discounts proportional to number of referrals?
__ 4. Do you normally provide discounts for multiple pianos?
__ 5. What number of pianos qualifies as 'multiple' (2,5,10, etc.)?
__ 6. Are discounts compounded for teachers with multiple pianos?
        (teacher=discount, teacher w/2 pianos=bigger discount)
__ 7. Are additional discounts provided for service frequency?
__ 8. Are discounts based on [P]ercentage, or fixed [D]ollar amount?
__ 9. [Discuss] Any variation on type of service, or other 'perks'
      provided to teachers?
__ 10.[Discuss] Other considerations I may have overlooked.

I feel this matter is significant enough to deserve a moment in time
on the list, but realize it would be useless bandwidth for some.
Therefore, I invite you to submit your responses (and additional
thoughts) to me privately. I'll compile(?) the overall results and
post a summary to the list.

Thanks!

Jim Harvey, RPT