<HTML>Terry, et all: Although the "symphony" or "university" sale might sound like a "rip off," I think we, as pianos technicians, are complaining about something for which we should actually be grateful. I have experience under two different scenarios for these special sales. First was my store closing. When I made the decision to close my store a little over a year ago, the local Steinway/Baldwin dealer agreed to run a "going out of business" sale for me. In exchange for using my store, and running the sale, I got a portion of the profits. A very well publicized sale resulted in the dealer selling 80 pianos in a just two weekends. (20 of mine, and 70 of his). Both of us made money. I was happy to get out of my store, and the dealer was happy because he sold so many pianos. And in addition to that, I got 10 new tuning customers. The university for which I now work has the use of 12 new pianos, which get rotated out every 6 months. The school gets to use these pianos for free. In exchange, the dealer runs a university sale. The dealer needs to make money, and having a university sale is how he can afford to give us the use of the pianos. Symphony orchestras have the same kind of arrangements, usually in conjunction with Steinway in NY. As cash strapped some of the symphonies are, this is a win win situation for both the dealer and the symphony. The bottom line on these kinds of sales is this. As much as we might not like the sales tactics, what the sales do is put pianos in customer's homes. The sales tactics used at these sales isn't any worse, or better, than the tactics used by some salesman at some pianos stores, every day. In many instances, people who might not otherwise have bought a piano, bought one because they thought they got a "good deal." So what if the "good deal" was paying as much, or just a little less, than what they could have bought the piano at the store. The main thing is, they bought a piano, instead of an entertainment center, or a new car.   But once the pianos have been sold, they need to be tuned.  And that is where we benefit. The dealer gives the new customer a card with several piano tuner's names on it, with a coupon for a $50 tuning. Hey, it's a new customer, and we didn't have to advertise for it.  Isn't that what we want, more new customers? So "quityourbitchin." If you don't want to tune these pianos, give the customer to someone else. Other wise, just shut up and do what your paid to do. End of my soap. Wim </HTML>