Symphony Piano Sale

[Farrell]

> So "quityourbitchin." If you don't want to tune these pianos, give the 
> customer to someone else. Other wise, just shut up and do what your paid to 
> do.

Your points are valid Wim. I do no dealer tunings or warranty work. When I bitch about these sales it does not come from the direction of the professional piano technician. It comes from the personal experience of a piano-purchasing consumer. About a year before I got into this profession I bought a new piano from a famous NY mfg. at a "University Sale" (went shopping for a less-than-$1K used piano). I was one of the suckers. It was a bad experience financially, we ended up with a bad piano, and we feel that we were treated badly. All this before I went into this profession. It is the vehicle that led me into this profession. I am grateful for that, but the career change was all due to my effort. My personal experience with these sales, the quality of the product from that company, the knowledge of the personnel at that company, and our treatment from the local representative of that company was respectively traumatic, poor, nearly non-existent and hostile. Again, that is an experienced consumer talking.

OK, I'll shut up. Thanks for your viewpoint. I do appreciate it.

Terry Farrell
  
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Wimblees@AOL.COM>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 02, 2002 6:38 PM
Subject: Re: Symphony Piano Sale


> Terry, et all:
> 
> Although the "symphony" or "university" sale might sound like a "rip off," I 
> think we, as pianos technicians, are complaining about something for which we 
> should actually be grateful. 
> 
> I have experience under two different scenarios for these special sales. 
> First was my store closing. When I made the decision to close my store a 
> little over a year ago, the local Steinway/Baldwin dealer agreed to run a 
> "going out of business" sale for me. In exchange for using my store, and 
> running the sale, I got a portion of the profits. A very well publicized sale 
> resulted in the dealer selling 80 pianos in a just two weekends. (20 of mine, 
> and 70 of his). Both of us made money. I was happy to get out of my store, 
> and the dealer was happy because he sold so many pianos. And in addition to 
> that, I got 10 new tuning customers. 
> 
> The university for which I now work has the use of 12 new pianos, which get 
> rotated out every 6 months. The school gets to use these pianos for free. In 
> exchange, the dealer runs a university sale. The dealer needs to make money, 
> and having a university sale is how he can afford to give us the use of the 
> pianos.
> 
> Symphony orchestras have the same kind of arrangements, usually in 
> conjunction with Steinway in NY. As cash strapped some of the symphonies are, 
> this is a win win situation for both the dealer and the symphony.
> 
> The bottom line on these kinds of sales is this. As much as we might not like 
> the sales tactics, what the sales do is put pianos in customer's homes. The 
> sales tactics used at these sales isn't any worse, or better, than the 
> tactics used by some salesman at some pianos stores, every day. In many 
> instances, people who might not otherwise have bought a piano, bought one 
> because they thought they got a "good deal." So what if the "good deal" was 
> paying as much, or just a little less, than what they could have bought the 
> piano at the store. The main thing is, they bought a piano, instead of an 
> entertainment center, or a new car.  
> 
> But once the pianos have been sold, they need to be tuned.  And that is where 
> we benefit. The dealer gives the new customer a card with several piano 
> tuner's names on it, with a coupon for a $50 tuning. Hey, it's a new 
> customer, and we didn't have to advertise for it.  Isn't that what we want, 
> more new customers?
> 
> So "quityourbitchin." If you don't want to tune these pianos, give the 
> customer to someone else. Other wise, just shut up and do what your paid to 
> do.
> 
> End of my soap.
> 
> Wim 
>