Cost of Piano tunings

[BSHARPTUNE@AOL.COM]

Dear List:  
I just came back from vacation and noticed the talk about piano tuning 
charges.   Ed Foote's comment about a repairman working on his fridge for 22 
minutes and charging 135.00 really rang a bell with me.  Two similar 
circumstances happened to me and is what prompted me to jump my tuning charge 
from 75.00 to 95.00 per tuning.              

First circumstance:  A year ago (1 month out of warranty, of course), a Sears 
repairman comes to fix my wife's 449.00 Kenmore dish washer.   He worked 86 
minutes.  The charge was 145.00 labor, 37.00 parts.    I'm thinking, this guy 
works on a 449.00 dish washer for 88 minutes and charges 145.00, but if I 
work on/tune a 25,000.00 Steinway in the same amount of time, I get 75.00?  
IT DON'T ADD UP FOLKS!  Even most verticals average serveral thousand dollars 
in value.

Second circumstance:   This summer our central a/c was not doing it's job.
The repairman determined that the heat disipating fins were dirty.  He takes 
a panel off the unit, and uses our hose to wash out the fins.  Total time: 
approx. 20 minutes.
Charge: 75.00.

This really began to bother me.  I concluded that these other repairmen were 
either charging too much for what they did, or I too little for what I did.