Another Question

Roger Jolly baldyam@sk.sympatico.ca
Sat Dec 12 16:30 MST 1998


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


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