"...is this honest"

[Delwin D Fandrich]

Of course these University Sales have only a passing acquaintance with good ethics. At least as presented back in the
original post. Using the good name and reputation of the university to sell garbage that could not otherwise be sold is
misleading. Many of these pianos never saw the university until the day of the sale. But since when has good ethics had that
much to do with how pianos are marketed and sold? I'm sure it is all quite within the letter of the law..

We live in an age of bottom line ethics. How does this practice or event affect my income, my well-being. If it's necessary
for the salesman/dealer/manufacturer to lie just a little bit to make the sale, well that's all right as long as it benefits
my bottom line. Right.

While we'd like to think that this attitude is a recent phenomena, it's not. Surely you all remember the stories of the
salesman with truck full of "repossessed" pianos that he can let you have cheap if you buy right now so he doesn't have to
take them back to the store and mark them up. Or, how about the inflated "retail" price that can be put on perpetual sale. Or
the inflated "retail" price that can be discounted just to you, and today only...you must buy today to get this special, one
time only, price!

Or the practice of putting a time-honored name on some new piano that resembles the original only in that it has three legs.
It's bad enough when these pianos carry a great old name; it's made worse when the sales brochure waxes eloquently on about
the great heritage of this marvelous plastic piano.

I once visited a small store in -- well, never mind where, it was owned and operated by a technician who was, at the time, a
member of PTG -- that sold the fine Stegler pianos of "fine German Design and Heritage." You couldn't pry the words "Made in
Korea" or "Made by Samick" out of this man with a crowbar. When he was forced, some months later, to acknowledge that the
only "heritage" these things had was the horrible Horugal, he still insisted that they were not the same at all, but were
"built in an entirely different part of the factory."

None of this stuff is new to the piano selling game. In the marvelous little book "Piano Quality" printed in 1920 there is a
list of stencil names that were used on pianos to mislead the public. Among them were these:
    "Masen & Hamlon" for Mason & Hamlin
    "Chickereng" for Chickering
    "Waber" for Weber
    "Knobe & Co.," also "Wm. Knobe," for Knabe
    "Kranick & Back" for Kranich & Bach
    "A. V. Chase" for A. B. Chase
    "Shomer & Co." for Sohmer & Co.
    "Renning" for Behning
    "Bradbery" for Bradbury
    "Bower & Co." for Julius Bauer & Co.
    "Baldnin" for Baldwin
    "Brumbach" for Brambach (Why did they bother with this one, I wonder?)
    "Emersen" for Emerson
    "Haynes" for Haines
And then there were these just for Steinway"
    Steinhardt, Stein & Co., Stein & Sons, Steinach, Steinbach, Steinbaugh,
    Steinbay & Sons (not forgetting the Steinday, Steinmay, etc.), Steinbeck,
    Steinburg, Steindell, Steinhard, Steinhardt, Steinhauer, Steinicke,
    Steinvey & Sons, Steinwebb & Sons, and Steinweg & Co.

No, using deceptive practices to sell pianos is nothing new.

And the argument that any sale that gets pianos into homes is a good sale since it will increase our own businesses doesn't
wash. Think of the hundreds of thousands of spinets and the hundreds of thousands of cheap consoles that are out there not
being played or serviced. True, many of these are owned by people who should not have wasted the money in the first place. An
impulse purchase. But many others are owned by people who thought -- were told -- they were buying a good piano. All too many
of these folks have simply given up in disgust. Their money is gone and they still don't have a decent piano. And they
certainly aren't going to make the mistake of walking into a piano dealers showroom again real soon.

We have to make up our own minds about these things. Just because the majority may believe that it's ok to nod and wink at
certain practices doesn't make them right. Besides, my concern with these "University Sales" (and the "Armory Sales" that
preceded them) is only partly with ethics ethics involved. Just think of the long term damage they are doing to the piano
industry. Aside from demeaning the instrument in the eyes of the public, once these manufacturers and mass-marketers have
their markets saturated, who is going to bring back the small, but important, dealers that have been wiped out in the
process?

Well, again I ramble...

-- ddf