>Dear Avery at al >I agree with your premise of the generally effective practice of prioritizing >the unisons when pressed for time, but one minor ( mercinary, I'll admit ) >>thing makes me curious.... Do you change your pricing structure for these >>special occasions, or does their often emergency nature, compensate >somehow >when doing the 'speedy' version? Jim, My feelings about your question is that it wasn't my fault they forgot to call in time for me to do a normal tuning. I make sure they understand that I will do the best I can in the time I have, but I make no claims about it being the best tuning of which I'm capable. And yes, I do charge them the full price. The only exception "might" be if they are an extremely good customer and I feel as though I might owe them a favor. But usually, in emergency situations, about the only thing on their mind is getting the tuning done in time for the concert. >Gee, I'm long winded :( Anyway, you get the idea, and at risk of incurring >the wrath of the anti-trust legislators, what do people pay for a regular, >straightforward tuning in your ( feel free to jump in here, readers ) area ??? As far as I know, the tuning rates here vary from around $50.00 to $80.00 or so. As you can see, there's no price fixing here. I personally recently went to $70.00 from the $65.00 I had been charging for over 3 years. That was the rate my predecessor was charging and I just kept it there. I don't have time to do much work away from the university, and with the distances involved in such a large city, I just decided I might as well try to make a little when I do go out. Also, since I don't even advertise, most of my tuning calls come from referrels or recommendations from faculty and students. A few calls have come to me because someone just called the music dept. office to ask about a tuner. So it would be extremely rare for me to get a "price shopping" type of call here. In the city I moved from, San Angelo, TX, I was one of the 2 highest priced tuners in town and I was only charging $45.00!! >Thanks, and best regards; I really appreciate the opportunity to learn from so >many of you out there in radio land, since I am the only tuner for 30 miles in >any direction, and it gets lonely up here, NOT that I'm complaining, mind you; >there are distinct advantages to being the only game in town.............. > Jim Kinnear, I.P.T. > KINNEAR PIANO SERVICES > Collingwood, Ont, Canada > EMAIL: jkinnear@georgian.net > HTTP://WWW.GEORGIAN.NET/~JKINNEAR _____________________________________ Avery Todd, RPT Moores School of Music University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-4893 713-743-3226 atodd@uh.edu _____________________________________
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