arms too long (or, how far is the car?)

[Susan Kline]

At 09:27 PM 08/30/2000 +0930, you wrote:
>I figure that if I need anything else I should charge extra and then it's 
>another trip to the car.

I think it may be time to look at this concept of charging extra for a trip 
to the car.

On the face of it, this looks like a question of how much to charge, but I 
think that is only superficial. The question, IMHO, is how much leeway to 
allow in one's basic tuning fee.

One can _assume_ that almost all pianos will have little things which ask 
to be done. I don't like leaving the holes where there should be knobs, or 
squeaky pedals, or split key buttons, or missing keyslip screws. In fact, 
I'm full of things I don't like: I don't like to nickel-and-dime customers, 
and I don't like having to explain small fees for this and that, and I 
don't like leaving little stuff wrong. I try to have enough leeway in my 
basic tuning fee that it will cover the small incidentals which almost 
always are there. That way I don't need to weigh the length of my arms 
against the amount I charge, and the short walk to the car doesn't need to 
start up some sort of meter ("ka-ching!"), like in a taxicab. I don't need 
to make a big sell job for a "full-service" visit. If it looks like the 
incidentals will swell to expand my time past an arbitrary limit (which for 
me is about two hours, YMMV) I'll explain and ask and quote, and all of 
that. In effect, I'm making all my visits, in a modest way, "full service." 
I often take care of little stuff which several other tuners have left. 
People seem to like it okay. I'm a few bucks over some of the other nearby 
techs, but I seem to hold my own.

My $0.02 cents-worth, but I won't quote it and ask for your approval first 
before writing the post ... consider it's on spec ...

Susan Kline