<html> Dean, it seems to me that you're on very shaky ground with this pricing. Consider the risk I am taking by extending the warranty. You just told us that you can usually keep a piano going for 8 years no problem, even without the CA ... Consider the cost to me that it took to develop the expertise to do this job. Okay, I will. What costs? Your computer time? I certainly paid nothing to learn this job, except some extra time for that first Zimmerman, to do the work more laboriously than necessary. Did you travel to a distant convention, or pay somebody a bundle to teach you to put CA glue on pinblocks? Consider how much money I am saving the customer. I'm afraid I'm more likely to consider the money you are taking from your customer. If you can keep the piano playable and tunable for pennies and minutes per tuning, what are they paying the $250 for? Consider I am taking an essentially worthless piano and breathing new life into it. Yeah, I like doing that, particularly at almost no cost to myself. If it can be cheaply restored to usefulness, is it still a worthless piano? Consider that everyone of these jobs that I've sold my customers have been very happy to pay such an amount for all of those benefits. Would they still be happy if they knew you how little it cost you to do it? Have you really thought through whether your fees should reflect whatever you can get, versus whether they should be based on how much effort and expense you have to shell out? If they spend money on their pianos which they didn't need to spend, they don't have it for everything else. Just my take on it -- we all have to figure out business ethics for ourselves. Also, the job is so new that we haven't explored the long-term results of various ways of doing it. As a little example -- cast your mind back to about 1955 or so, when the Lester plastic elbows started failing. To replace two broken elbows back then required pulling out the spinet action, removing the individual wippens, and then providing new (probably wooden) elbows, pinning them on, and replacing the action. Big deal, big fuss, and no doubt big fee. Then the Vagias elbows came out -- one could suddenly pull off the kickboard, crunch the old elbows (gingerly) away from the center pins, turn the wires into the new ones, and pop them on. Less than 5% of the fuss and work of the old way. How would you feel if somebody knew about the new procedure but didn't tell you, used it on your piano, and charged you the old fee? We're still pricing pinblock work as if we were using the old glycerin (misnamed) pin "tightener." We're not. We don't have to do it that way, but we still are using the same procedure, only we substitute the CA glue for the glycerin and alcohol. I don't think it's appropriate, or that the labor and fee are justified. JMO, as usual -- Best, Susan At 03:34 PM 9/23/2005 -0500, Dean wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Susan wrote: I'm sure you are, and no doubt you are sincere. However, a $250 job which takes 30 minutes? So, do you usually charge $486 an hour? (allowing for the $7 cost of materials) Do you consider this a good use of your customer's money?   I spend 15 minutes or so selling the job, so really I m only making $330/hr. assuming I get no callbacks and have to spend no additional time nursing it through the 8 year warranty. But really I d like to get it up in the neighborhood of what a proctologist makes which is about $300/minute.   Consider the risk I am taking by extending the warranty. Consider the cost to me that it took to develop the expertise to do this job. Consider how much money I am saving the customer. Consider I am taking an essentially worthless piano and breathing new life into it. Consider that I am buying peace of mind for my customer for another 8 years. Consider that everyone of these jobs that I ve sold my customers have been very happy to pay such an amount for all of those benefits. I feel pretty good about it. 8-)   Pushing 50 harder every day and still not rich (by this world s goods),   Dean Dean May             cell 812.239.3359 PianoRebuilders.com   812.235.5272 Terre Haute IN  47802  </blockquote></html>