[CAUT] Rockley Family Foundation

[Porritt, David]

Paul:

 

We've done it in the past and it is pretty much as you describe.  We now
own all of our pianos here and our aim is to keep it that way.  We used
to get 13 new (green, needing a year of use and prep) pianos each year
and just when they were nice they'd be replaced with another 13
fresh-from-the-factory instruments.  

 

Not fun!

 

dp

 

David M. Porritt, RPT

dporritt at smu.edu

 

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
Paul T Williams
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 9:26 AM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] Rockley Family Foundation

 


Dear List, 

Has anyone ever heard of or worked with the Rockley Family Foundation?
I got a phone call in a semi-"cold call" style (he knew my name from
some list) asking if we at UNL would be interested in a loan program of
pianos to be replenished every year.  I asked him to send me some
information and he e-mailed me this morning. 

In Seattle, several smaller colleges have done this sort of thing with a
couple of the piano stores in the area.  They would loan various pianos
to them for a year at no charge and then sell them a year later.  The
problem I saw in this was that the stores would bring in many of their
new pianos at that time, having a "SUNDAY,SUNDAY, SUNDAY!!" sale and
only the school pianos were sold at much of a discount.  Lots of
advertisement on every media possible would be invested and lots of
people would show up, making it basically a warehouse sale. I'm a bit
leary of this and having been a store tech for many years, didn't like
the store's tactics in their selling styles.  Bit my lip many times from
some of the crap the "used car salesmen" type folks would say to
potential victims,  ahhh, customers I should say.  On a university end
of it now, I would be faced with breaking in many new pianos every year
and just when I get them semi-stable, I'd have to start over. 

Any advise or testimony y'all can bring to this subject is welcome! 

Best, 

Paul T. Williams RPT 
Piano Technician 
School of Music 
University of Nebraska 
Lincoln, NE 

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