String Breakage (Reply)

[Ron Nossaman]

At 08:32 AM 1/21/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Hi Ron,
>
>One mans *abusive expense* is sometimes another man's belief in doing the
>*right* thing. I wish people would not become so perjoritive.


Hi Don,
That wasn't intended to be pejorative. It's a judgement call. A tech
insisting on spending $40, or $60, or $80, or $100 of his customer's money
on a new string and multiple trips when a $15 splice will satisfy both her
and the piano, will probably lose that customer. I routinely leave it up to
the owner. I explain the process, the cost comparisons, the expected result
(both ways), and stand back. Usually, I make the splice because usually, the
customer considers the cost of doing it *right* to be unnecessarily abusive.
The customer generally sees this as the tech trying to do *right* by them,
rather than soaking them because he can (been on the soaked side, right?),
and since, technically, it's not *wrong* to splice, and it's a simpler
practical "fix", the splice gets made. If I had a blank check to do what I
thought was the right thing with every piano I tuned, I guarantee I'd have a
bunch of monetarily traumatized, but musically better off customers. Why do
I think that's unlikely? For one thing, I'd never convince most of them of
the need.

 Ron