SNIP We have never, not once, raised our price on a job after the estimate is signed. And we have eaten a lot of mistakes and unseen stuff over the years. Keeps us on our toes! Paul Paul, Ed, and others, Note: what follows is my own personal business philosophy, and should be taken as just another perspective. No disrespect intended. I truly don't understand not being paid for work you do. Mistakes, mind you, are another thing, and I wouldn't think of charging clients for errors in procedure or judgment. However, when we discover a surprise - whether during a rebuild or a house call - fix it (with approval), and charge accordingly. When I am tuning and a string breaks, I charge for that. I didn't expect a string to break, but I won't replace strings for free because I didn't anticipate it happening. To me, it's the same in a rebuild situation. I don't think it serves either my clients or me to either write an estimate to include every possibility of things that could be found, or, conversely, to eat the cost if it goes over. Neither do I see the lesson to be learned in absorbing unexpected costs. For my person, I think that would lead me toward creating artificially high estimates to cover the "just-in-case" scenarios. Actually, I suppose one could do that, thereby allowing them to come in "under-budget" and end up charging the client less than the initial estimate. I suppose that would be reasonable too. In my business, however, I specifically have a clause in my contract that stipulates that there are occasionally unseen issues, and if I can solve it within [X] % of the estimate, I will proceed with the repair without any additional contact with the client. Their signature on the contract is written approval. If it exceeds [X] %, I will obtain additional written permission before I proceed. Certainly, I think it behooves us all to be very thorough in assessing pianos for rebuilding, and not just writing a "form estimate" letting all the details be discovered at teardown. But I think as long as we are conscientious and thorough during our initial assessment, the infrequent surprises that surface should be billed accordingly. My thoughts, William R. Monroe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20080219/5a42f79d/attachment.html
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