Hi Avery, As a dealer, and as a contract C & A tech for Baldwin, that does a fair amount of work for a wide spectrum of dealers. I can offer a few different spins to you questions. Open dialogue is the big key to your discussions, secondly it is important to understand the level of education, re piano technology that the dealer has. The deal the I have with the Baldwin dealers that I work with, is on a per diem basis, their in house tech has normally tapped strings to bridges and tuned the instruments before I get to them. This saves the dealers from paying me for pitch raises etc. Since the product line up is upper end quality, with the exception of Petrof, the work should mainly be refined concert quality regulation and voicing. averaging a half days work per unit, unless the instruments come in below par. The Petrof's from what I have seen will need a full days work each. From a dealers point of view it is nice if you can budget on a fixed price per unit for complete prep. the better the quality of mfg the less prep that seems to be required. The advantage to you of a fair fixed price, is that you will not have to get in to a discussion on the price of every unit and thus avoid any misunderstandings over money, ( the root of all evil) Work on 1/2 day minimum, so if you clean up a piano in 2 hrs. check out the rest of the floor stock and touch up defects as required, lets face it he is using you because the $15. floor tuner does not have the expertise to do what you are able to do. Your in home warranty work should be billed out at 20-25% of your normal rates, As a dealer I think that is fair, and I have no complaints from any of the 4 contract techs that I have working with me. It is important to show the dealer the faults that you find, and to show him how you are going to do to correct the problems, this will build trust as well as educate, if you tech him to run chromatic open 5ths and triads he will soon know a good voicing and regulation, and will be requesting you to do more work. Openess and honesty is always the best approach. Hope this makes some sense. Regards Roger At 10:22 AM 12/12/98 -0600, you wrote: >List, > > In my Bluthner pedals post, I mentioned that the dealer had asked me >about the possiblility of doing some store work. What he's looking for >is someone who is competent to regulate, voice, etc. There's others who >can do the floor tunings but he's had trouble finding someone good >enough to work on the types of pianos he carries: Bluthner, Beckstein, >Bosendorfer, Seiler, Petrof and a few others. > Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to determine my fees in >a situation like this? Percentage of my tuning fee? Hourly rate? Daily >minimum if I spend the entire day? Other? > I want to keep it low enough to ensure that he'll have me do the work >(I think it'd be enjoyable) but high enough so he'll think of me as a >professional technician and not a $15.00 a piano floor tuner. > Any thoughts will be appreciated as this will probably be discussed >sometime this coming week. Thanks. > >Avery > >___________________________ >Avery Todd, RPT >Moores School of Music >University of Houston >Houston, TX 77204-4893 >713-743-3226 >http://www.music.uh.edu/ > Roger Jolly Baldwin Yamaha Piano Centre Saskatoon and Regina Saskatchewan, Canada. 306-665-0213 Fax 652-0505
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC