<html> <body> At 12:42 PM 8/15/2008, William F. Monroe wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> If you did substandard work, refund the money.  If you didn't, don't.  Easy as pie.  You performed a valid service, you should be compensated and should not feel guilty for that.  If you don't value your time, neither will your clients.  When you give a refund, you are validating your (former?) clients complaint that you are not qualified.  You are qualified, you did render top-notch service (above and beyond, I might add with the call-backs).  You really shouldn't allow yourself to be made to feel badly about this one.  I know some battles aren't worth fighting, and you have to make that call.  One thing to keep in mind, however, is that no matter what you do for this one, chances are pretty good she won't say good things about you.  Refusing a refund won't make that part of this situation any worse.   Invite her to call another qualified technician.   William R. Monroe</blockquote> Many years ago in Boston I was that "other qualified technician" that a lady with an old beater called. She was not happy with how the work of the previous tuner sounded - a fellow whom I knew to be a perfectly competent practitioner. I discussed the problem with her and from what she was telling me I got a hunch. So I slightly fuzzed up the unisons on a couple octaves and asked her if that was better. She was ecstatic - yes, yes!. So I did that to the rest of the piano, collected my fee and left a happy client behind. Never heard from her again, thank G-d. Maybe good clean unisons on a crummy piano bring all those acoustical anomalies into sharp focus. Fuzzing the unisons may mask them. Or maybe I am just making excuses. Who knows. But it worked once and I never lost any sleep over it... Israel Stein <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""> <dl> <dd>Wow. This is a first for me. This lady is nuts. I checked the piano out this past Sunday. It had a few unisons singing a bit (IMHO, not uncommon a week after doing a 25-cent pitch raise), but otherwise sounded fine (well, as "fine" as most any 1970 Baldwin console sounds). And I told her so. I checked octaves, thirds, fourths, etc., etc. and it's all in the ballpark. <dd>  <dd>She plays a tune and stops and says "hear that? it's wrong"! Well, sure, anytime you play an E and an F# together it sounds pretty bad! But she'd play other things and stop and say "that's wrong". Sounded fine to me. I didn't know what to say really. We did talk about the possibility that she had just gotten used to how it sounded when it was way out of tune. She agreed to play it a bit more and see. <dd>  <dd>So she calls me just now ranting and raving "it's all wrong, it's all wrong".  She says even her students are complaining. What the ........ <dd>  <dd>She tells me that some times one song will sound fine, and then the next one sounds wrong. <dd>  <dd>Does the piano good. Of course not. It sounds like a crappy little Baldwin console that has sat too many years on the back porch (enclosed) of a home in Florida. But it sounds to be in as good a tune as any little piano like it. <dd>  <dd>So I guess the next step is to simply tell her that I don't seem to be able to satisfy her piano service needs and that she might be more satisfied with someone else's services. But that leaves one question remaining - in her view I have not tuned her piano - in my view I have. I don't think I should be returning her $95 (yeah, yeah, I didn't charge her for the pitch raise....). But then again, I'm sure she's on some sort of fixed income, and I've really never had an unhappy customer before...... <dd>  <dd>I don't think there is any real good resolution to this situation. Any great ideas? Just tell her to find someone else and leave it at that? Seems like the only thing that makes any sense to me - but I kinda hate taking her money also..... <dd>  <dd>Terry Farrell </dl></blockquote></body> </html>