Valuing ourselves

[Richard Brekne]

Been reading many of these posts and really guys... I have a hard time 
why so many of you seem to be selling yourself so cheap.  85 bucks for 
an hours work ??  Who does that besides piano techs ?  Sounds more 
reminiscent of what a contractor might pay some high school kid to do 
the yard work he's got as part of some landscaping deal.

I can understand perhaps an inexperienced tuner doing store tunings and 
grandma's Best-to-Toss for that kind of money in order to build up 
experience... but guys in the business for 25 + years should be ready to 
pump up the volume quite a bit.  If you get less work... and make the 
same or just a bit more... and have more interesting work in the 
process... well hey... thats the idea isn't it ?

My standard price over here is 1150 NOK + 25 % VAT. Thats roughly 210 
dollars plus the VAT.  That covers an hour and a half of work.  I have 
all the work I can do and more. 

One thing I noticed right off the bat a few years back when I finally 
decided to stop tuning for peanuts... Interesting customers... the ones 
with good pianos who actually care a bit about them and are willing to 
take a bit of care for them, choose the guy who charges the most when 
they are at all in doubt. 

Once you have such a customer.... he/she is yours to loose.  Do a bang 
up job of it for those 200 greenbacks and they will most definitely call 
you back.  ALTME.

Cheers
RicB