It occurred to my wife and I (who run the business together) that we should have a written policy about this kind of thing. I'm curious to how others have dealt with this type of situation. Your thoughts and ideas are appreciated! -- Ryan Sowers, RPT Ryan I filled in for a tuner here on Hawaii for a couple of months. We didn't have any written agreement, but verbally we agreed that she would pass my name on to anyone who called her, and wanted service before she got back. I did tune a couple of her clients, but I have not contacted them, nor have they called me. (although they were much happier with my tuning than hers). I did get one customer who had never used her, and is now my regular client. This client would have called someone else if she hadn't been referred to me, so there was no loss on her part. If an unknown customer calls you for service, and you can't do the work, and recommend someone else, unless you have some sort of agreement with the other tuner, a finders fee, or something, that client becomes the customer of the other tuner. (That client would have called someone else if you had not given her the name of the other tuner). If that same customer calls you again because she forgot the other tuner's name, out of courtesy, give it to her. If one of your regular customers calls, and you have someone you use as backup on a regular basis, then I would suggest you have some sort of understand, either written or verbally, (I recommend in writing), how that is dealt with. Then, if that customer calls you and asks for the other tuner, you have that understanding, and you get part of the action. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Ryan Sowers <tunerryan at gmail.com> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Tue, Apr 13, 2010 3:56 pm Subject: [pianotech] Filling in for fellow technicians Hello list, I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this topic. A while back I serviced a piano for a piano techncian buddy of mine. He had to take a couple of weeks off work for some medical reasons and he asked me to tune a couple of pianos for a prestigious client. I was a bit taken aback when, after servicing the pianos, the client asked if I would take them on as a client. On the fly I said that we have a policy of a 2-year waiting period before we can take on a client in this type of situation. That seemed reasonable to me. I encouraged the client to talk to my friend and try to work things out. Also, the past few years around the holidays we have hired technician friends to give us a day or 2 so that we don't have to say no to clients who need service before Christmas but don't schedule far enough in advance. On one occasion a client called back several months later wanting to schedule a tuning but wanted to have the fill-in technician (this was a new client - I had not met them yet) instead of me! It occurred to my wife and I (who run the business together) that we should have a written policy about this kind of thing. I'm curious to how others have dealt with this type of situation. Your thoughts and ideas are appreciated! -- Ryan Sowers, RPT Puget Sound Chapter Olympia, WA www.pianova.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100413/85d15a7c/attachment-0001.htm>
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