In a message dated 8/28/2009 2:34:48 P.M. Central Daylight Time, wimblees at aol.com writes: I just received a private post from a non-member who agrees with me that a pitch raise and fine tuning can be done in one sitting, followed with a return visit 6 months, or even a year later. He thinks that scheduling a follow up visit 2 weeks later is not necessary, and borders on being unethical. While I don't necessarily think it is unethical, I do agree that there is no need to come back in 2 weeks, if the pr and fine tuning were done right. I'll say it once again, Wim, but it's tiresome. If the piano requires a radical pitch change, you might be able to tune it adequately after the pitch work and leave it for some (ethical) period of time before returning. The use of the word fine in relation to a totally destabilized piano is misleading and wishful. You need to make a distinction here. To be sure, if this piano is being used for a concert, and it was indeed 10 or 15 cents low, then the return visit is necessary, but only because a return visit for a concert is SOP in the first place. But other than that, it is not necessary. And here's why. Pitch raise situations generally fall into two categories. And everything in between. It's a false dichotomy. One is where the piano was bought by someone, and they want to get it tuned. In this case, the previous owner had neglected the piano, and the new customer wants to start fresh. Selling her/him a pitch raise is easy, and the customer will be very open to having the piano tuned again in 6 months. The other situation is where the customer hasn't had the piano tuned for 5 or 10 years, and was either told by someone the piano is badly out of tune, or she/he has a party coming up, and wants the piano to sound good. When I was still in St. Louis, I only sent out reminder cards which asked customers to call me to schedule an appointment. I would say only about 25% of the pitch raise customers, including those who promised to call me in 6 months, did so. Some might call after a year. But a majority would never call me, or maybe 4 or 5 years later. For those who just bought the piano, maybe they called someone else, or decided the piano was a bad investment, and sold it again. But for those who had the piano tuned for the party, will probably not have it done again until just before their next party, 10 years later. They just don't hear it, and it's not important to them to have the piano tuned that often. Now that I pre-scheduled appointments, half of those I pre-schedule 6 months later will call me to cancel the appointment. The others will have me come, but question whether or not it needs it. Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician Mililani, Oahu, HI 808-349-2943 Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20090828/14b932e5/attachment.htm>
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