[pianotech] call-backs you can't charge for

[David Love]

I especially love the ones when they call you three months after you've been
there and say, "Gee this started happening right after you were here" (a
sticking note right after a tuning suggesting that your tuning caused the
note to start sticking).  Usually these are the once every 5 years
customers.  

David Love
www.davidlovepianos.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Nereson" <da88ve at gmail.com>
To: <pianotech at ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:50 AM
Subject: [pianotech] call-backs you can't charge for


>    A client called and said her daughter hears several buzzing notes.  I 
> just tuned it a few weeks ago and didn't hear any buzzing.  But I go to 
> check it out.  Client wasn't home --  forgot I was coming.  Fortunately 
> there was a housekeeper who let me in.  I play up and down the scale, and 
> sure enough, there's some buzzing underneath somewhere.  I open the bottom

> panel and see two small, rusty woodscrews lodged between the plate and the

> bottom board, one of them against the soundboard. I remove them, and, 
> "Presto!" -- no more buzzing.  (Why couldn't they have buzzed when I was 
> tuning a few weeks ago?)
>    Suddenly client shows up (was walking the dogs).  I show her the 
> screws, tell her there's no more buzzing, and she says, "Oh, thank you 
> soooo much!" in a tone that's so grateful I can tell she thinks I came to 
> remove the problem as a huge gratis favor, and that certainly I don't 
> intend to charge anything.  (When they say, "Do I owe you anything?" then 
> you KNOW you'd better say, "No, that's OK -- I was in the neighborhood" or

> something similar.)
>       I spent a half-hour driving, two minutes finding the problem, ten 
> minutes waiting around for the client, and another half-hour back to the 
> shop -- 1 1/4 hours for no compensation. Sometimes you just get the "vibe"

> from the client that they think any buzz, noise, tinnyness, or other quirk

> that shows up within, say, a month after you tuned it, is your fault, 
> since it wasn't doing that before you tuned it, and therefore must've been

> caused by your "tuning" and you should come fix it for free.
>    Oh sure, you can say, "I have a $xx minimum billing for service calls,"

> but then you lose the customer and any referrals from them.
>    I've even done 12 hours' extra labor on a large reconditioning job to 
> get rid of problems they implied were my fault, even though these things 
> were not in the job estimate, but from their tone of voice and attitude 
> you can tell that it's either fix everything for free or get into a big 
> argument, much unpleasantness, and maybe even a lawsuit.
>    But of course you can't deduct the value of your time on your tax 
> return, since the IRS doesn't see your time as being worth anything.
>    --David Nereson, RPT