What we charge?

[Roy Ulrich]

>On the one hand, Roy, I agree with you. We should be able to discuss what
we
>charge. I guess the paranoid comes from the way everyone has a tendency to
>sue. If a sharp lawyer should get a hold of one of these posts, and
discovers
>that 3 or 4 piano tuners in St. Louis happen to charge the same rate, he
>could have a case against us, especially if he found out we all belong tot
he
>PTG. And then when finds out that piano tuners Minneapolis and Chicago also
>charge the same,   thing, he could go after the PTG. I know it sounds far
>fetched, but you never know.

Personally, I think there's about as much chance of that as there is in
getting a McDonalds drive up employee to put your french fries in the bag,
right side up.

>As far as helping newbies set a price, that I am against. In the class I
>teach, I make it a point that every one has to look at his or her own
>situation. For
>anyone to set his or her fee based on what the competition is charging is
not
>the way to go. A very highly respected member of the PTG once said he
charged
>a couple of dollars more for his services than the next highest competitor.
>And when he finds out someone else is charging the same as him, he raises
>his. That is not the right way to charge for your service.
>
Oh, I couldn't agree more - I'm not advocating that at all; I'm simply
saying that there's a lot of information to go around in this forum, and
that evading the price issue based on the idea that  _any_ discussion of
price could or would result in prosecution is ludicrous.

Worst case scenario some goofy customer pursues the notion of "price
fixing", they would have to _prove_ such a thing. I don't know of an
attorney who would bother to return the phone call for the little bit of
money at stake. (The last I saw, the most one could collect is treble
damages - $60 tuning times 3 = $180; that's not even 2 hours for a low end
attorney.)

Roy Ulrich