After reading on this subject for the last several days I thought I might have a valid opinion to add. For those who are not aware I have the university piano contract for UNLV, (University of Nevada, Las Vegas). I have dealt with several of these sales in a variety of locations over the years. UNLV is neck deep in one. On the surface it looks like a great deal. Limited budgets are stretched by acquiring new loaned pianos rather than purchasing them. "Students and teachers get to use new pianos instead of old ones and everyone is happy". Sounds simple enough, but does anyone ever think of the piano technician? We have 19 loaned pianos as follows: (2) C-1s (3) C-2s (2) C-3s (1) C-6 (1) C-7 (5) P-22s (5) U-1s Maintaining these loaned pianos has been nothing short of a living hell, as they are almost futile to stabilize well enough for use in a university. They arrive in late summer, typically no earlier than three weeks before the fall semester begins. They are new and unpacked right out of the box on the premises. In desperation I intentionally pitch raise them all 20 cents sharp as quickly as I can, (that's right, 20 cents). Within two weeks they are all 10 cents flat. Then I tune them to A-440. This is acceptable for about 2 weeks at best after which I must tune them all again. This lasts about three weeks after which I am tuning them again. By the end of the semester I have tuned them all at least five times not including my initial forced pitch raise. This labor of course doesn't include the other fifty university owned pianos that I maintain. The spring semester normally isn't so bad because they have somewhat stabilized enough that I can at least breath a little. Unfortunately the dealer has pulled a fast one this year. In December they decided that they wanted to swap out half of the pianos that were brought in at the beginning of the fall semester. No doubt this was so that they could sell them under the B.S. "former university piano" marketing tactic while simultaneously not breaking their loan agreement with the university. You can guess what my reaction was to this. Essentially they are using the university as a warehouse and a means to sell "university pianos" year round. We used to have about fifteen university owned pianos in storage. We needed to purchase an S&S D for a new recital hall. The dealer convinced the university to trade in all the pianos in storage toward the cost of the new Steinway. What actually ended up happening is they gave the university almost nothing for the trade ins, (a couple hundred dollars for the uprights and about a thousand for the grands). Now the university is more dependent than ever on the loan program since we don't have enough pianos to back out of it and the savings on the new Steinway was nil at best. It is terribly unfortunate that universities have become suckered into these deals. With the loaned pianos out of tune all the time I see no advantage. Truth be known the old pianos would have been more usable. Over time they could also have had at least some partial rebuilding work done to bring them up to par. We are now in a blackmail situation and with no end in sight. I believe that university loan programs COULD work IF strict rules were made and enforced. For example, a minimum of two years loaned instead of one. To be fair they could stagger the loaners out by swapping out half of them each year so that in any given time half would be new and half would be from a previous year. In my opinion UNLV is grossly being taken advantage of and the system is being abused. Recently I had an in depth discussion on the matter with the administrator who is responsible for the loan program. We are setting a new rule for them next year with an ultimatum which may result in switching to a competing dealer if not followed. First, they will deliver and set up the new pianos immediately following their sale instead of waiting until two weeks before school starts. Second, they will no longer be allowed to swap out pianos until the year long term has ended. We have a small handful of lesser used pianos that I am going to swap around this summer that will reduce our loaner dependency by two units next time but with all of our stored pianos gone we are pretty much screwed. My recommendation: If you are a university tech and NOT currently on a loan program and a dealer approaches the school to try and start one, educate the administration on what is at stake and urge them to run away like the wind. It's not worth it and the only one who wins is the dealer who suckers the public into thinking they are getting some kind of a deal. Instead I would urge establishing a fund each year toward purchasing a single new piano and at least partially rebuilding one or two others. Rob Goodale, RPT' Las Vegas, NV
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC