Customer Complaint on Tuning

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Terry

Welcome to the real world of BestsyourRoss POSes.  I think you have it 
pretty much covered here.  You did your best, you are confident your 
best is more then satisfactory.  Keep the money and tell the customer 
you are sorry yours and her perceptions of tuning dont seem to match but 
your conscious is clear and she obviously is best served by using 
someone else next year.... or however stretched in between tunings her 
interval is.

In the meantime relax. Remember we love you :)... take two Tylenols and 
a shot of Scotch and watch a good old black and whitey.

Cheers
RicB



    Wow. This is a first for me. This lady is nuts. I checked the piano
    out this past Sunday. It had a few unisons singing a bit (IMHO, not
    uncommon a week after doing a 25-cent pitch raise), but otherwise
    sounded fine (well, as "fine" as most any 1970 Baldwin console
    sounds). And I told her so. I checked octaves, thirds, fourths,
    etc., etc. and it's all in the ballpark.

    She plays a tune and stops and says "hear that? it's wrong"! Well,
    sure, anytime you play an E and an F# together it sounds pretty bad!
    But she'd play other things and stop and say "that's wrong". Sounded
    fine to me. I didn't know what to say really. We did talk about the
    possibility that she had just gotten used to how it sounded when it
    was way out of tune. She agreed to play it a bit more and see.

    So she calls me just now ranting and raving "it's all wrong, it's
    all wrong".  She says even her students are complaining. What the
    ........

    She tells me that some times one song will sound fine, and then the
    next one sounds wrong.

    Does the piano good. Of course not. It sounds like a crappy little
    Baldwin console that has sat too many years on the back porch
    (enclosed) of a home in Florida. But it sounds to be in as good a
    tune as any little piano like it.

    So I guess the next step is to simply tell her that I don't seem to
    be able to satisfy her piano service needs and that she might be
    more satisfied with someone else's services. But that leaves one
    question remaining - in her view I have not tuned her piano - in my
    view I have. I don't think I should be returning her $95 (yeah,
    yeah, I didn't charge her for the pitch raise....). But then again,
    I'm sure she's on some sort of fixed income, and I've really never
    had an unhappy customer before......

    I don't think there is any real good resolution to this situation.
    Any great ideas? Just tell her to find someone else and leave it at
    that? Seems like the only thing that makes any sense to me - but I
    kinda hate taking her money also.....

    Terry Farrell