Dear List -- Just more food for thought -- or go ahead and accuse me of dipping a few too many sticky fingers into the soup ..... Yes I too get a lot of shoppers on my phone wanting to know my tuning rates. Before I give out any numbers, I try to get as much information about the piano as possible -- how long ago was it last serviced, will it be played to accompany other instruments, will anybody be taking piano lessons, are there any problems with keys sticking or just plain not working, and so on. From there I try to figure out how many hours it will take and will ask the customer to budget accordingly. If they are very undecided about what they would like done apart from tuning, I ask them to budget for at least 2 hours. A lot can happen in those 2 hours -- perhaps a couple of very fast rough & ready passes followed by "nicer" passes and as fine a tuning as the instrument would allow. From this I can get ideas about the overall condition of the piano, its apparent tuning stability section by section. ... Whatever happens, I won't let the customer determine how many passes it will take overall, and that is why I do not set prices on individual pitch corrections. Each piano responds differently to pitch corrections, even if the corrections start at the same pitch. If there are kids taking lessons or if there are other instruments around, I won't even let the customer decide whether or not they want the correction -- I decide for them and explain why. My non-secret to success is in the explanations. I try not to sound like I'm rehashing a pre-planned schpeel or that I am more interested in the money than I am in providing them with something that can "fulfill its obligation" to the customer as a working instrument. Nor do I try to come off like a bulldozer in the case of a neglected piano -- I try to make the most of its virtues and encourage the customer to consider having its weaknesses brought up to the level of its virtues or something like that. ZR! RPT Ann Arbor MI diskladame@provide.net
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