I am amazed at the recent price discussion of PR's. A pitch raise can and should be done in a quick 15-25 minutes. Charging anything more for punitive damages is ludicrous. I personally charge an extra $25 for a PR and that can be done in the time mentioned before. If it is a PR and tune of 100 cents or more I explain the possible string breakage and actually have small print on the invoice that states any piano older than 1950 may be subject to string breakage as well as adverse conditions and so on... then I state that I can not gauranty stability. NO one questions that. I will always state the piano should be tuned again in 2-3 months. You guessed it, no one hardly ever calls back for that tune. NO one should be penalized or forced to pay for three or four tunings because you don't know how, or won't pitch raise in one pass. I am not speaking of excessive overpull, just bring it up... then tune. Then tell 'em you'll need to come back in 2-3 months to stabalize the piano. If they choose not to call then when they call in a year and you find the piano at 30 cents flat then charge for another pitch raise and suggest the same as before. If I failed to change my oil at the "3,000" mile mark and they said their 19.95 special did not apply because I let it go to 7000 miles and the charge is now $50 I would be upset to say the least. I know this analogy does not completely work here, but the principle is the same. Let us charge for the work done without punitive damages being accessed. I look at a pitch raise to be anything above 8-10 cents or more. We generally are not referring to concert work here. The concert work that requires a PR is charged for the work from me on an hourly rate. Ed Tomlinson
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