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

[Susan Kline]

You seem to have my idea okay, Gina. My point was not that it is right or 
wrong to include or exclude various services in a tuning fee. My point is 
that for someone to decide to charge more because he or she walked to the 
car is completely arbitrary. After all, we all decide what to keep in the 
car and what to keep in our kits, and which details we will fix and which 
we won't, and therefore how much walking to the car we will do.

Personally, I prefer to leave more discretionary money in a tuning fee, so 
I don't have to fiddle with small additional charges. Therefore, I decide 
to charge more if the total time spent on a job will be more than a certain 
amount, leaving me free to visit the car without counting the trips.

Susan

At 01:57 PM 08/30/2000 -0400, Gina wrote:
>Susan,
>
>Not sure I quite understand when you say, <<The question, IMHO, is how much
>leeway to allow in one's basic tuning fee.>>
>
>Imho, one of the greatest aspects of being self-employed is that we,
>individually, set our own fees for our services and we, individually, choose
>what that may be. Factors that effect it include the obvious supply and
>demand but also our own sense of what seems right and wrong and what seems
>important to us as technicians.
>
>Some charge a set fee for each individual service provided, e.g. tuning is
>one fee, tightening screws another, cleaning the soundboard another, etc.,
>etc., etc. Some include some basic items just like you described that you do
>in their fee. Neither is right nor wrong; it just is.
>
>The gougers don't last long in this business; those who give quality service
>that their customers deem satisfactory do.
>
>My 2 cents,
>
>Gina
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Susan Kline <sckline@home.com>
>To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 11:30 AM
>Subject: Re: arms too long (or, how far is the car?)
>
>
> > 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
> >
> >