Depending on how badly you want to get or keep this customer, you can charge some reasonable amount to work her into your day off, or not. I am often asked to tune evenings or weekends. Almost always, we work out something for a weekday, but recently I got an email from someone I have tuned for twice, who lives right across the street (in a little tiny town) from a rather good friend of mine... They wanted me to tune on a Saturday. I said I would, for a 25% surcharge. I never heard back. If I tune on my day off, I'm sure not going to schedule it full to make it worthwhile to drive 3/4 hour each way to the town to tune one mediocre piano and do it for my normal fee, on a day that I don't want to be working. If you have your normal schedule posted (there are many small businesses, e.g. bicycle shops, coffee shops that are closed Sun and Mon, or Mon and Tue) then those are your closed days. If I want a pound of coffee beans or an inner tube for my bicycle on Monday, that's tough bananas for me. If I want organic bananas after 10pm, I have to find a store that has them, which guaranteed is not the corner gas station convenience store. A friend's furnace recently went out. It was forecast fairly cold (like -5°C) that night, a Sunday. The furnace repair outfit offered to come, but for a much more outrageous surcharge than my piddly 25%. She declined, and just bundled up and slept in the living room in front of the fireplace that night. Same thing. She opted to save some money for a bit of a sacrifice. My 2 bits... Paul Bruesch Stillwater, MN On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Matthew Todd <toddpianoworks at att.net> wrote: > One of my days off during the week is Tuesdays. As of right now, I am > scheduled three weeks out. I had a client call me to schedule a tuning. > She has a son who is practicing for a recital, so she needs it done next > week. I will be tuning her piano next Tuesday. How do you all handle > surcharges in cases like this? I remember a discussion on it a while back, > but cannot find it in the archives. Do you add an item on your bill that > states this extra charge, or do you just put it in with your tuning cost? > What would be a reasonable amount? Or is this whole idea just stupid and > not "keeping the best interest of my customer" > > Thanks again! > > ***TODD PIANO WORKS* > Matthew Todd, Piano Technician > (979) 248-9578 > http://www.toddpianoworks.com > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090401/36dd0d02/attachment.html>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC