Board of Education Pains

[Barrie Heaton]

O' Jim, that's another illusion shattered, I all ways thought that
America was the land of free enterprise and market forces.

We used to have a simmilar problem here the Schools in some areas were
given to the Blind Socieities and no matter how little you offered to do
them there was no way you were going to get in there, unless you poked
your eyes out of course :-).

Things changed,  Local Schools Management came in.  Each individual
School has a maintainence budget,   this means they can get whatever
tuner they like.  From a personal experience I thought this was a good
idea,  I now have forty Schools on my books where as five years ago I
had none.  However, a lot of the Schools are not bothering to have ther
pianos tuned at all.  This saddens me very much... as some of these
pianos have not been tuned for five years.

There are exceptions to LSM, Birmingha,m parts of London, Surrey and
Bristol are all controlled by the Home Workers Scheme.   Which dishes
out the tunings to the local Visually impaired piano tuners.

You may be lucky,  the Gentleman who has the round may be ready for
retiring.  So keep knocking on the door,  one day they may let you in.

Kind regards,

Barrie.


In article <32F7898F.6169@abraxis.com>, james allen bickerton
<jbickerton@abraxis.com> writes
>While attempting to expand my young piano tuning business, I did what I
>am sure a lot of you have done.  I attempted to crack the lucrative
>school system market.  While visiting a local High School, i was told
>that tuning contracts were obtained through the local Board of
>Education.  So far, so good.  I visited the local Board with my tuning
>package in hand, confident that my pricing structure and services
>offered were as competitive as any in the local area.  But I never made
>it past the Receptionist desk.  A phone call to the Maintenance
>Supervisor secretary revealed that there was NO FORMAL BIDDING PROCESS,
>and the "vendor that is routinely used is quite adequate, and will
>continue to be used, however, if you leave your package with us, we will
>keep it on file for future reference."  When I inquired again about the
>possibility of bidding for work, I was told that "Dr. So and So makes
>the vendor assignments as the tuning requirements are called in from the
>field."  Needless to say, I felt rejected, even though I didn't take it
>personally, knowing that in a lot of instances, no, most instances, WHO
>you know is more important than WHAT you know.  My question is, have any
>of you experienced a similar situation, and how did you manage to "break
>in" through the glass barrier?
>                                             JIM
>                                             Starving Piano Tech
>





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Barrie Heaton                                  |  Be Environmentally Friendly
URL: http://www.airtime.co.uk/forte/piano.htm  |  To Your Neighbour
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