Overbooked Chris Trivilas, in his "Touchup Revisited: article in the September Journal, mentioned the dilemna of having one of your best customers call at the last minute for a tuning. I had that situation happend a couple of months ago. On a Thursday evening I got a call from the choir director of a large church with many pianos, for whom I have been tuning for 8 years, (and in the market for one of my rebuilt grands), to tune the piano in the sacntuary before Saturday, when he had 3 weddings scheduled. With no time on the calander on Friday, I had 3 options. 1. Work an extra couple of hours on Friday, 2. Cancell one of my appointments, on 3. Recommend another tuner. Since my wife and I had tickets to the symphony Friday night, I couldn't work the extra hours. I thought about cancelling one of my other customers, figuring that one of them wouldn't know the difference why I cancelled. But then maybe this customer belonged to a church with a lot of pianos, or needed her piano rebuilt, or had a friend who needed her piano rebuilt. I have never cancelled one appointment to schedule another. I have cancelled because I was sick, or because of an emergency, but never to schedule another appointment, and I didn't want to set a president to do that. So I did what I thought was best. I recommended he find another tuner. Since I didn't know the schedules of the other RPT's in the chapter, I just told him to call someone. I haven't heard from this choir director since he called me, to tune the other pianos at the church. I have been wondering if I lost him to a competitor, or is he mad at me for not dropping everything to take care of him, or is he just late getting around to calling me? The question I have is this. Should I have given up the tickets to the symphony? Should I have cancelled one of my other appointments? Did I do the right thing? What are some thoughts and opinions on the matter. Willem Blees RPT St. Louis
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC