<HTML>In a message dated 6/5/01 9:27:39 PM Central Daylight Time, pianolover88@hotmail.com writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">On a lighter note, If a customer failed to show up for a tuning appointment, would you charge her mileage to make a second trip? I did. Terry Peterson </BLOCKQUOTE> First, regarding specialty advertising. I found, for the most part, that anything but the Yellow Pages, or a constantly running 3 or 4 line ad in the classifieds promoting your tuning business, doesn't pay. I have tried dozens of them, and none of them produced enough additional work to make it worth while. Sometimes they just barely broke even, and some didn't do a darn thing. As far as no shows are concerned. I wrote a post about this subject about a year ago. Basically, I give the customer the benefit of the doubt for her excuse why she wasn't home. In fact, what difference does it make what her excuse is, the bottom line is, she wasn't there to let you in to tune the piano. Therefore, my stand on this subject is that this part of the "job description" of being a piano tuner. It comes with  the territory. No matter how hard we try, there are always going to be no shows. Therefore, I write it off, and go on with my life. When I did try to collect in the past, it created bad feelings. I just don't need that. So I let it go, and hope we can reschedule at a later date. Of course, the customer only gets one shot at this. The second time, I get nasty, and either collect, or write the customer off for ever. Willem </HTML>