FREE FALLING FALLBOARD

[Kenneth W. Burton]

	Jim,

	I am as pleasant and helpful to my customers as I know how to be
but I do not give them a choice about pitch raising. When I give an
estimate of the cost, I simply include the pitch raising as a matter of
course. To give them a choice about the pitch raise, is about the same as
a car mechanic giving you a choice about how much oil he should put in
during an oil change.

	Ken Burton "Doctor Piano" Calgary Alberta

On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, james allen bickerton wrote:

>
> While tuning a Kimball Grand for a first-time customer, I immediately
> realized that the piano was on average about 40 cents flat.  The piano
> was manufactured in 1994, and the owner claimed that the piano had been
> tuned within the last 12 months.  The owner also expressed
> dissatisfaction with her previous technician, claiming that the tech,
> while tuning her piano, had removed the fallboard, and while in the
> process, had broken the slow-fall mechanism on the fallboard.  I have
> several questions:
>   1.  How difficult is it to repair the fallboard?
>   2.  When confronted with a piano requiring a pitch raise, and the
> owner refuses to pay charges beyond a standard tuning fee, do you (a)
> refuse to do the work, (b) tune the piano at current pitch  (c) spend
> the extra time and do the job right for the standard fee?
>   3.  How does one handle customers when they speak ill of other piano
> techs, especially when it is obvious that the previous work was
> performed poorly?
>
>                                     JIM
>