>The higher hourly rate is pretty easy to quote over the phone. My fee has morphed into a workable schedule. The first .5 hr. is $55 locally and then $80/hr thereafter. I ask them how much time they would like to schedule. Basic is 1.5 hr @ $135. Yesterday, two pianos went .5 hr over the basic with action maintenance and the fee was $175. People understand this pretty well. For long time customers where I know the piano and can simply tune and get in and out in an hour or less, I'll charge $85. When scheduling a time with the customer, I'll give a .5 hour window with the first tuning and an hour window on subsequent tunings, this allows for service without a time crunch. I started giving a time window after one women scowled that I was 15 minutes late. I said no, I was early because usually I'm a half hour late. Further away from the shop has a higher first half hour fee, commensurate with the number of pianos in that area. People are funny... somewhat. One guy 'just picked up a free Acrosonic'. A few strings are broken and a few notes don't work. He wanted it cleaned and tuned. I said it would take at least two hours. To which he said that it shouldn't because the piano teacher said it 'shouldn't take too long to fix". After some minor disagreement banter, he decided he'd call someone else. Obviously he needed someone with more experience. Good Reddens. Although, I still have one $20 customer, a 90+ y/o daughter of the long ago local piano tuner who lives just up the street. She gave me most of his tools many years ago. She has not seen a price increase in over 30 years. She always gives me a $5 tip. Bless her heart, makes my day. -- Regards, Jon Page -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100702/7d01e1f9/attachment.htm>
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