---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment In a message dated 4/12/04 6:53:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Wimblees@aol.com writes: Thank you for your contribution to the topic at hand. My question to you is, if you charge your normal rate for the first piano, and it took you 30 minutes to tune, then how much do you charge per hour to do the other tunings? Is you hourly rate the same as your tuning rate? Do you charge a full hour for only a partial hour? OK, Wim. With all due respect for all applicable laws, codes, and statutes, I will talk real dollars here. (And bear in mind that I'm not advocating that anyone else charges the same fees.) I charge $95 for a tuning service call. This is based on my billing rate of $54 per hour and equates to about 1.75 hours. I will perhaps spend 1.25 hours actually tuning; another 0.3 hours on minor repairs, aligning, regulating, lubricating, etc.; and 0.2 hours communicating with the client, writing out an invoice, checking out her autoharp, etc. Now, suppose I do a service call for the local church, three pianos. One of these is the grand piano in the sanctuary, in regular, somewhat critical use; tuned about four times per year. The second is a 20-year-old studio upright in the choir room, twice a year. The third is a 105-year-old upright in the fellowship hall with a shot pinblock, semitone low in pitch, most of the keytops missing, but is still used occasionally and gets tuned every other year if somebody remembers. I tune the sanctuary piano first and bill $95; it has only taken me an hour this time around, so I'm temporarily 'ahead of the game'. I go to the choir room where I spend two hours including replacing a couple broken treble strings. I check my watch and see that I've now been working for the church three hours altogether; that comes to $162 at my billing rate; subtracting the $95 I've already billed them, I charge $67 for the second piano (for 1.24 hours of work, theoretically, although part of time has been 'borrowed' from the first tuning). Third piano: I know it won't stand raising to pitch and that it is only occasionally used, never critically. I judge that the church will best served spending the least money on this one - and I'll be happier spending little time on it! It gets a half-hour tuning without pitch-raising and I repair a broken hammer shank: 0.7 hours on this wreck, and I bill $38. The church knows that I'm working for their best interests, doing the right things for the right pianos, keeping their costs down. I've not 'discounted' my tuning fee, but I have switched to the hourly rate after the first piano, thereby saving money for the client while assuring my income. It's true this doesn't result in the same bill for the church each time, but it assures them that the job will be done right with appropriate cost containment. In my experience, this makes them very happy - and it keeps me from having to do work I can't bill for. I hope this helps some of my colleagues. ~ Tom McNeil ~ Vermont Piano Restorations ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/caut.php/attachments/82/81/46/88/attachment.htm ---------------------- multipart/alternative attachment--
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