price raising

[Farrell]

I know you have a good point. I do not do this all the time. It gets so
yucky sometimes with these old uprights. I know many techs will not even
service them (ethics?). You have a piano owner that just bought this old rat
trap for $200 and they want it tuned. So you go. Then you pick away at the
darned thing, sometimes carefully positioning a finger adjacent to the left
side of the hammer for C5, after spending 3 minutes carefully calculating
the deflection angle required to exactly send the hammer - that, left to its
own wanderings, will hit two strings of B4 and only the left string of C5 -
onto the ALL three strings of C5 (just one example of the things that will
slow you down and you do not have something easily identifiable that needs
fixing - keeping in mind if they spent $200 for the piano, hammer alignment
is not likely high on their list - there are many more similar things). Do
this a few times and you have your 10 minutes (or much more) for 10 dollars.

Keeping in mind the $200 piano customer, it can be kinda sticky at times to
stop 1/4 way through the tuning to tell the piano owner that it will be $5
to  glue this hammer back on. And 1/2 way through the tuning to say it will
cost $3 to glue the jack for A4 back on and 3/4 way through the tuning, it
will be $18 to re-install the damper spoon on B6 that popped out......oh,
and because I need to take the action out, we will need to spend $50 to
replace the bridal straps........ad nausium. You know where I am going with
this. It's just frustration. I feel like I gotta do something!

I actually only do it once in a while when I have someone on the phone that
is a would-be new client that sounds like they will pay for a tuning but not
a pitch raise, and certainly not anything else! After all, all the keys
work......usually. I figure they will likely call someone else. On the few
occassions when I did get the tuning, if the piano was actually OK, I just
charge my normal fee -  I do not volunteer anything, just hand them the bill
for the normal amount. If they say anything, I just say it tuned up just
fine and it didn't take as long as usual and that is my fee. No one has ever
argued (only happend a couple times).

Terry Farrell
Piano Tuning & Service
Tampa, Florida
mfarrel2@tampabay.rr.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Clyde Hollinger" <cedel@supernet.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Monday, September 11, 2000 7:30 AM
Subject: Re: price raising


> Terry,
>
> I don't think you should give a discount for the worst ones, but charging
a
> premium doesn't seem right to me, either.  Shouldn't you charge for the
work you
> actually do?  Why not keep your tuning price the same for all pianos, then
add
> extra only when you do extra work?  To be sure, you should be compensated
for
> all the work you do.
>
> I suggest looking at it from the client's point of view.  Anyone should be
able
> to understand paying an extra separate charge for additional needed
repairs, but
> if you tuned for two neighbors and charged the one $10 more simply because
they
> had an old upright, your ethics could be in question.
>
> Along that line, I had a client one time whose spinet player piano always
took
> me substantially longer to tune.  I informed them the next tuning would
cost 25%
> more, and told them why.  We parted amicably, and I've never been back,
and I'm
> happy about that.
>
> Regards,
> Clyde
>
> Farrell wrote:
>
> > I charge $10 more
> > for old uprights because I figure I will spend at least 10 minutes
gluing a
> > few hammers back on or the like. If I charged $1 per key, I would be
> > charging less than for the old beater than for a newer piano - I would
be
> > giving a discount for the worst ones! NO WAY! ;-)
>
>
>