A question of liability

[Frank Weston]

You are making a mistake in viewing this incident in terms of "fault".  It
doesn't matter whose "fault" it was.   Two things do matter:

1.  What the customer will think of you and say about you if you don't
resolve the issue completely to their satisfaction.  You may have a lot more
riding on keeping their good will than just the cost of patching dents in
the floor.  It matters not whether you are in the right or in the wrong.  It
only matters what the customer thinks and says.

2.  What the customer will do to you.  Right or wrong, they can sue.  If
they do sue, it will cost you whether your insurance company pays for a
lawyer or not.  It will cost you time, and it will cost you increased
insurance rates.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.

FWIW, I do think you are at fault.

Frank Weston

-----Original Message-----
From: bases-loaded@juno.com <bases-loaded@juno.com>
To: pianotech@ptg.org <pianotech@ptg.org>
Date: Saturday, March 25, 2000 7:25 AM
Subject: A question of liability


>There's a first time for everything....
>
>I have a customer with a 100 yr old full size upright that has a lot of
>very loose pins in the center section, so on Thursday of this past week I
>rolled the piano away from the wall, put it on its back on the tilting
>truck, applied CA, tipped it back up, and stopped back after 4 other
>tunings to tune the treated section.  It was perfect, and the customer
>couldn't have been happier.
>
>Then yesterday I get a call that her husband is pretty upset that the
>piano left "dents" in the floor where I moved it out.  Not caused by my
>tilting truck... it seems it was the piano casters.  She didn't think it
>amounted to much, but asked me to stop by on my next visit to the area to
>see what I could do.
>
>My question is this:  to what degree am I liable if it was caused by
>their piano and their casters, and all I did was roll it out from the
>wall.  She claims it is not a marring of the finish, but a denting of the
>wood that the husband is unhappy about.
>
>I have liability insurance, but wanted some input from the group as to
>whether any of you has been in this situation before.
>
>Thanks
>
>Mark Potter
>bases-loaded@juno.com
>