I especially love the ones when they call you three months after you've been there and say, "Gee this started happening right after you were here" (a sticking note right after a tuning suggesting that your tuning caused the note to start sticking). Usually these are the once every 5 years customers. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Nereson" <da88ve at gmail.com> To: <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:50 AM Subject: [pianotech] call-backs you can't charge for > A client called and said her daughter hears several buzzing notes. I > just tuned it a few weeks ago and didn't hear any buzzing. But I go to > check it out. Client wasn't home -- forgot I was coming. Fortunately > there was a housekeeper who let me in. I play up and down the scale, and > sure enough, there's some buzzing underneath somewhere. I open the bottom > panel and see two small, rusty woodscrews lodged between the plate and the > bottom board, one of them against the soundboard. I remove them, and, > "Presto!" -- no more buzzing. (Why couldn't they have buzzed when I was > tuning a few weeks ago?) > Suddenly client shows up (was walking the dogs). I show her the > screws, tell her there's no more buzzing, and she says, "Oh, thank you > soooo much!" in a tone that's so grateful I can tell she thinks I came to > remove the problem as a huge gratis favor, and that certainly I don't > intend to charge anything. (When they say, "Do I owe you anything?" then > you KNOW you'd better say, "No, that's OK -- I was in the neighborhood" or > something similar.) > I spent a half-hour driving, two minutes finding the problem, ten > minutes waiting around for the client, and another half-hour back to the > shop -- 1 1/4 hours for no compensation. Sometimes you just get the "vibe" > from the client that they think any buzz, noise, tinnyness, or other quirk > that shows up within, say, a month after you tuned it, is your fault, > since it wasn't doing that before you tuned it, and therefore must've been > caused by your "tuning" and you should come fix it for free. > Oh sure, you can say, "I have a $xx minimum billing for service calls," > but then you lose the customer and any referrals from them. > I've even done 12 hours' extra labor on a large reconditioning job to > get rid of problems they implied were my fault, even though these things > were not in the job estimate, but from their tone of voice and attitude > you can tell that it's either fix everything for free or get into a big > argument, much unpleasantness, and maybe even a lawsuit. > But of course you can't deduct the value of your time on your tax > return, since the IRS doesn't see your time as being worth anything. > --David Nereson, RPT
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