cheated customer. was Re: Whitney spinet

[Wimblees@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 98-11-22 18:55:15 EST, you write:

<< I'd like to suggest that your response [>In my opinion, you were dishonest,
 and cheated the customer.] seems a bit too strongly worded.
 My *initial* reaction was the same as yours, but after some thought I
 concluded that what he meant to say was that rather than doing a "sudden"
 pitchraise, for example with a 25% overshoot, he instead took the pitch
 barely up to A440 on each pass, necessitating 4 passes to stabilize the
 pitch and tuning.
 
 While I almost always do my pitchraises to A440 as rapidly as possible, it
 is legitimate to skip overpull on the first pass if the scale or string
 condition warns me that breakage is very likely.
 
 As to the amount that he charged for the "extra tuning" ... we all have
 different rates and approaches. Personally, my standard tuning fee is 1.5
 my hourly rate, and pitch raises are by the hourly rate on top of that (0.5
 to 1.0 hour). Not knowing his fee structure, I'm not ready to condemn him
 for his approach.
 
 Your explanation of how you would have approached the situation was how I
 usually approach the average piano.
 Happy Thanksgiving,
 Patrick Draine >>


Patrick:

Thanks for the compliment about the Journal article. 

What I read in Ted's post is that he charged the customer in the event a
string might break. For that I disagreed with him. And Ted, if I offenedd you,
I appologize. But I think you know by now that I say things the way I see
them. I didn't argue at all on how much Ted charged for the pitch raise. That
is entire up to each individual. Just don't charge a customer for something
you don't do.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. 

Wim