Customer Complaint on Tuning

[joel a. jones]

Israel,

First year tuning I was sent out to tune a Sohmer console.  BADLY out 
of tune with the usual 1/2 step flat.
Well, this was too much of a challenge to pass up.  I raised the pitch 
and achieved a solid tuning.  Busting
my buttons with pride.  A week later my boss asked me to recheck the 
piano as the customer had called, and did not
like the tuning.   Puzzled I checked the piano to find that it was very 
much as I had left it.  Busting more buttons.

I started checking how my pins were set and raised the pitch to see how 
stable the unisons had remained.
Suddenly the customer screamed "That's it  !   That's my piano ! "    
So, I continued to raise one string from
the unison two beats or so, much to her delight.

I rationalize that she had become so accustomed to her piano being out 
of tune, that when I 'tuned' it the
sound she anticipated was gone.  Fortunately this scenario only 
happened once - so far.

Tuning the customer .   Smiles all around !



Joel
On Aug 17, 2008, at 12:40 AM, Israel Stein wrote:

>  Many years ago in Boston I was that "other qualified technician" that 
> a lady with an old beater called. She was not happy with how the work 
> of the previous tuner sounded - a fellow whom I knew to be a perfectly 
> competent practitioner. I discussed the problem with her and from what 
> she was telling me I got a hunch. So I slightly fuzzed up the unisons 
> on a couple octaves and asked her if that was better. She was ecstatic 
> - yes, yes!. So I did that to the rest of the piano, collected my fee 
> and left a happy client behind. Never heard from her again, thank G-d.
>
>  Maybe good clean unisons on a crummy piano bring all those acoustical 
> anomalies into sharp focus. Fuzzing the unisons may mask them. Or 
> maybe I am just making excuses. Who knows. But it worked once and I 
> never lost any sleep over it...
>
>  Israel Stein
>
>
>
>
>> 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
>
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