<HTML>In a message dated 3/16/02 4:34:12 AM !!!First Boot!!!, davidlovepianos@earthlink.net writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Don't take me quite so literally. David Love </BLOCKQUOTE> David I realize that the story you gave is not a word for word telephone conversation, and neither was mine. And I am not trying to persuade you to change your practice. I wish you all the luck in the world with it. I just wanted you to be aware that what you are doing might not solve the problem you described. It doesn't make any difference what you charge, and how you justify it. Someone is going to ask you to explain your fee structure, and they will not be happy with it.   One of the problems we have in this business is that we are dealing with two different price structures. One is a set fee for a set task. ($80 to tune a piano). The other is an hourly wage to do everything else. Now we may have come up with set fees for doing other things, ($250 to put on a set of bridle straps, $800 to regulate an action, $350 for a new set of keytops). but they are all based on the amount of time we spend doing them, multiplied by the hourly rate we charge, (plus parts). That is why we should set our tuning fee by what we charge per hour. But you first need to figure out what that hourly rate is. Vivian Brooks and I both have excellent classes on this, and if you look in the archives, or on the CD ROM, you will probably find many articles on the subject. One thing I find disturbing, is there are tuners who charge $70 per tuning, and take an hour and half to do that tuning. But then they charge $70 per hour to do technical work.  That means if they need to charge $70 per hour to pay the bills, every time they go do a tuning, they loose $35. If they did 20 tunings in a week, they will have lost $700. They should be charging the same for a tuning as they do for technical work, which would be $105. But that would be way over what everyone else charges. So something's got to give. My recommendation is to learn to tune faster. Again, David, please don't think that I am arguing with what you are doing. As I said, if you think it is fair, and the customers are satisfied, go for it. Wim. </HTML>