> >I did some market research by calling about a dozen of them getting price >quotes in order to establish a reasonable fee for my services. Attitudes >ranged from surly to desperate. I did that too, when figuring out where I wanted to live. It was a real eye-opener! Medford-Ashland was the craziest. The yellow pages there had a tremendous long list of tuners, and one prominently advertised "Same Day Service" !! I shuddered, and drove north ... Tremendous amounts of grief and effort could be avoided if people were better at positioning themselves in places where there was a felt need, instead of in a crowd of piano techs struggling for market share. sssn P.S. Scouting areas, I felt like a fake as I asked about getting a piano tuned. People carefully explained pitch raising to me, etc. However, it was in everybody's interest that I find an uncrowded place which still had piano owners, so I went ahead, and pretended to be a prospective customer all up and down a lot of California and Oregon's I-5 corridor.
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