<html> Mike,     There is a temporary deadlock, for sure, but one of the things you need to watch for is the mistaken assumption about who is responsible for the warranty. There are as many different "dealer agreements" between suppliers and dealers as there are brand names. Maybe more.    Give an estimate, or not, of the cost of repairing defects, and advise the customer to seek satisfaction from the dealer. The customer may need to get legal or semi-legal assistance. State attorney general down to local Chamber, BBB, or Arbitration board. Don't do any more work without a solid assurance of payment. Just my 2¢ Guy Nichols, RPT At 04:16 PM 1/3/2003 -0500, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Hi List,    Subject: 3 yr old Otto Altenburg grand made by Samick. Cust has been complaining of "sticking keys" and keys "not bouncing" since new. I am the 3rd tech involved. Previous techs have done the Proteck thing without having found anything specific wrong and have been trying to sell a Dampp-Chaser, so I'm told by the cust and dealer. The player is a 13 yr old boy who plays VERY well.  I did find VERY sluggish hammer and extremely sluggish wippen flanges to the point that most had to be re-pinned and a few wip flanges had severe wood binding. Temp was 71deg and humidity was 42%. I charged the dealer for the work.  Two weeks pass and she called me again stating it is a single key "not bouncing", I asked her to have her son mark the offending key, which he did and it was failing when I arrived. The problem was a severely tight jack/flange.. it was taking 1-3 minutes for the jack to get back under the knuckle, again, pinning was not the issue but a wood binding problem. All was well. I didn't charge anyone this trip. Temp 70deg, humidity 43%.  Today she called back again, 3 weeks later, with the same issue, different keys. The dealer made it clear to me last time they would not put any more money into this piano so I told the cust I would be happy to fix the offenders or take the action home but I would have to charge for it this time. She told me it had a lifetime warranty and the dealer would have to pay me.    So... as I se it, this is a piano that was not right from day one and the action or the piano should be replaced or at least the dealer needs to pay whatever it takes to make it right but they don't want to do that.  Is this a common Samick problem? I know you get what you pay for but she paid for a working piano and it doesn't.   Thanks folks!   Mike   Mike McCoy RPT Chapters 170 & 190 PTG Langhorne, Pa <a href="mailto:mjmccoyrpt@earthlink.net">mailto:mjmccoyrpt@earthlink.net<= /a></blockquote></html>