THANKS! for the stories! I have a client who is making me tear my hair out, these stories make me think, "Well, it could be worse!" This woman has just retired from teaching school and has inherited her mother's piano! (a 1940's something Wurlitzer spinet in bad shape). She is taking in students to supplement her retirement income. She has decided she wants it "rebuilt, pinblock and all" (she hasn't heard the price yet). She is trying to break into high society in the town she lives in and complains about how she has to "kiss.........". She had the music teacher's association to her home last week--the house is decorated to the n'th degree....... then there is the Wurly :-( She had me tune the piano in the church library for her recital in April. It's a monster of an old upright, but did tune at pitch. But sustain pedal is a disaster, amongst other things, which I did point out to her--"they're just beginners". I will have to go back to completely restore the sustain pedal. Today she played the piano after church--apparently she had never played it before!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In spite of everything I told her about it. Now she is in a state of panic-- about the pedal. She is so clueless.............I don't remember ever having such a steep teaching curve ahead. Diane Hofstetter From: PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:56:34 -0500 To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] The high cost of trying to save money (was: NY hammers/ Hamburg ha... Israel, that's funny. I had a client in the early days of my tuning career who promised to clean up the piano before I arrived. When I got there, he had the piano, a big old upright, in the back yard, and had hosed out the keybed and strings, and "oiled" the tuning pins. Total loss, of course, but such good intentions. Paul In a message dated 2/13/2011 10:00:45 A.M. Central Standard Time, custos3 at comcast.net writes: Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:50 -0800 Horace Greeley <hgreeley at sonic.net> Hi, Dale, At 08:58 PM 2/12/2011, you wrote "How much is it if you only tune the white keys, they're the only ones I play?" from Jimmy Gold RPT Actually, while I can't speak to the amount necessary to pay for it, I can answer the question (sort of): "Sure! I'll be more than happy to tune just the white keys for you. However, you do understand that, in order for the white keys to stay in tune for very long, I'll have to be exceptionally careful in adjusting the tension on the strings of the black keys. Since that takes so much more time, and is so much more demanding that just tuning the whole piano as I normally would, it will be much more expensive...". Which reminds me of the time when I had a commercial photography business in new Mexico - and was always faced by complaints from artists whose work I was photographing for ads and publicity about the cost. The usual line was "I just need a regular picture - nothing fancy". A veteran of the trade, Shel Hirschorn, advised me that in that case I should quote them double the price. See, to do "just a regular picture", I would have to mess up my lighting, skew the composition, find an inappropriate background, determine an incorrect exposure, fuzz up the focus - all of which involves extra work... Then there is the one about the farmer out in the boonies who hired the "best tuner in town" to tune his wife's piano. The guy did the best tuning he could, collected his fee after convincing the suspicious farmer that it was indeed the best possible tuning on that piano and went home. Next day he got a callback from the farmer complaining that the piano sounded terrible. He went out to check the piano - and found a black spot next to each tuning pin. The farmer welded each tuning pin to the plate... The story might be apocryphal, but it does illustrate to what lengths ignorant people will go to save a few bucks at the expense of a service provider (and often, their own property or well being) ... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110213/bc8c2a75/attachment.htm>
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