stumped

[Andrew and Rebeca Anderson]

You can't afford to identify too emotionally with 
the customer here.  When you want to do more than 
you can, they wonder why you don't.  If you are 
kind but firm about the situation, they put the 
blame where it belongs ( not on you ).

Andrew Anderson


At 10:17 PM 12/3/2007, you wrote:

>I tuned (no I really didn't) for "Dennis" today- 
>and old Howard (sn 220***- for which I didn't 
>find a reasonable match in Pierce's). The 
>retired engineer had married a Russian lady, 
>young enough to be his daughter- and nicely I 
>made that mistake.  Bass strings were dead, 
>multiple bridge cracks, the strings painted 
>gold, several replaced, about six pins in the 
>center where a tiny amount of counterclockwise 
>pressure sent the string a half or whole tone 
>flat. They also popped loudly when they let 
>loose- like Baldwin, only it was virtually no 
>useful tension on the pin.  There were a couple 
>pins up around note 80 which were the same 
>way.  Hammer 88 was within 1mm of having 
>the  felt open up at the bottom of the grooves 
>on the flat-topped hammers.  Problem was, the 
>man had bought this as a birthday present for 
>this wife who is a HIGH level concert player 
>while she was out of the country.     I was 
>there over four hours, so mad that they guy had 
>gotten screwed (I believe the damage was done 
>before prior owner sold it to him- she wasn't a 
>player, so bought it mostly as furniture), and 
>that I couldn't make a decent tuning.  The 
>Russian asked if I had ever tuned a piano like 
>this before








.       I pulled the action 
>and went through everything with him, and he 
>seemed more than satisfied that little if 
>anything could be done- but the wife- I think she wanted me dead.
>
>When and HOW does one just give up on a POS when 
>nothing works?  This really bothered me.  I've 
>tuned Howards before and hated them, but got 
>them tuned.  Nothing rendered decently, nothing 
>stayed stable for me.  I've never had anything 
>quite like this before, and hope I never do again.
>
>They can't afford another piano, though their 
>house was probably valued at twice mine, and 
>they had two rather new cars (Honda an Buick) I 
>think.      I'm coming off a week of three 
>Houston Symphony Tunings, another major Hall, 
>two tunings of the most expensive piano in town, 
>and directing two performances of the opera 
>Amahl and the Night Visitors.   I know I was 
>tired


  But I had just done quite ok on a 
>Petrof for one of my really persnickety 
>customers, so I haven't completely lost my 
>"tuning mind".  I'm mad they got screwed, mad 
>she can't play musically on this pos, but still 
>feel somehow I should have been able to do 
>something to make it work.   Sorry to be kind of 
>nuts here, but I'm feeling kind of lost.
>
>les bartlett

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