Nearby music store had a sign near their repair bench: Yes, we count you as one of our friends, but we still must charge you for the repairs. You see, we did some research, and none of our enemies does business with us. David Stocker, RPT Tumwater, WA From: Gerald Groot Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2011 17:02 To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] FW: The high cost of trying to save money (was: NYhammers/Hamburg ha... One of my mentor’s had a sign just like that hanging in his store. This sign should be posted on Piano World for all of the DYIERS. From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jack Houweling Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2011 7:59 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: [CAUT] FW: The high cost of trying to save money (was: NY hammers/Hamburg ha... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a sign I always remember, I don’t use the figures but you get the point. Regards, Jack Houweling . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2011 3:57 PM 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 mailto: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 Iplay?" from Jimmy Gold RPTActually, 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/20110214/8fa517cf/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 35647 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110214/8fa517cf/attachment-0001.jpeg>
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