Guarantees

[Ron Nossaman]

>Maybe they won't believe you the first time, but 
>hopefully when they talk to another technician, who will presumable say the 
>same thing  -- 

Nah, more likely the other tech ( chosen from the Yellow Pages by the way
the listing looked ) will want to seat the strings on the bridges, tighten
plate bolts, file the hammers and re-tune, all for a mere $279.95. The
customer will go for it, since it's a positive action kind of fix rather
than an after the fact explanation. This will, of course, seem to work for
a while, and the customer will be assured that they have finally found a
*real* tech. When the piano goes out of tune again with the next humidity
shift, the customer will be traumatized and most likely will not get it
tuned again until he/she can get a *good* recommendation from a trusted
friend, since the last two techs obviously weren't any good. If the
customer does eventually find a good tech, he/she will tell the new tech
the story of the last two. The new tech will explain that the first tech
(Clyde) was quite correct all those years ago, and will go on to explain
the costs of the now necessary pitch raise and follow up tuning. Now this
is the important part. The third tech will end up with the permanent
customer by telling him/her the same thing the first tech told him/her. The
customer will never call the first tech again, even though he/she now
realizes that the tech is honest and capable, because he/she would be too
embarrassed to admit their reaction to their mistaken impression of the
original circumstance. Besides, he/she now has a *new* honest and capable
tech that arrived without any extraneous emotional baggage attached, He/she
therefor needn't subject him/herself to the embarrassment anyway.

This sort of thing is the obvious work of Babbakazoo, the ancient Etruscan
god of random idiocy. He's one of the few ancient Gods that never had to
retire for lack of enthusiasm among His subjects. While each of us may see
His occasional influence in our own actions and try to take preventive or
corrective measures, there's not a lot we can do about His work with other
people. We just have to put our efforts where we think it might make a
positive difference, do the right thing by our personal standards, and try
to avoid large groups under the obvious influence of Babbakazoo.

Ron N