To Step in It/and walk away

[Wimblees@aol.com]

Carol:

I agree with Jim, about the patience, and Jon, about walking away. Chalk it
up to experience, and hopefully you won't run into this again.

I have a somewhat similar situation. One of my clients, a Russion immigrant,
very good player, and teacher, owns an old German made upright she took with
her from Russia. I have refinished the case, tightened every screw in sight,
regulated the best I could and shaped the hammers so much there is ahrdly
anything left. The piano is almost worn ou, but she insists it is still the
best piano every made. I cannot seem to convince her that no matter what I
do, it is not going to sound any better.

To make matters worse, after I tune the piano, she comes along and plucks
every strings, and tells me if it sharp or flat. That's right, with the
dampers on, she starts by plucking all three strings of A4 with her finger
nail, and tells me the right one, or sometimes it is the left and middle, is
high, or low. Shen then proceeds to do the same thing with every string. At
first I thought she could realy hear this. Then I started to experiment. I
purposely left one note out of tune. Guess what, she didn't hear it. I also
would just, shake the pin a little with the hammer, and not move the string
at all, and she would say, "that's better". The last time I tuned it I used
my SAT. I then had her go through and do her plucking thing, and made sure
she liked what she heard. (It sounded off to me, but if she is happy, who am
I to complain.) I then recorded her version of the tuning. I can't wait to go
back the next time to tune the piano the way she wanted it.

The last time I also told I didn't want to do this any more for the same fee.
I told her I needed to charge her more because she took an extra hour of my
time. She has given me a bunch of students, but no enough to compesate for
the extra hour of my time. (she also demands a discount). I told her if she
wasn't agreeable to that, to get another tuner. Her first reaction was to do
that. But I think she realized she was getting a good deal, so as I was
leaving, she said, "see you next time".

Willem Blees  RPT
St. Louis

What's  with these foreign people, wanting discounts, playing horrible
pianos, and expecting top notch service for nothing?