>A local dealer here just had one of those mega-sales and a friend bought a >piano there (new). Rather than get a free tuning, he got a coupon good >for a 50% discount on a ($100) tuning from a particular tuner. I'm sure >the tuner is doing it for the 50% so the dealer is paying nothing for the >first tuning. Is this common? I'd certainly never heard of this before. > >dave I don't know if it's common, but there's a dealer doing that here too. Rather than use tuners he knows and trusts, he gives $50 coupons toward paying for the customer's choice of tuner. So the customer directly pays the tuner the difference. The tuner then redeems the coupon with the dealer. The idea is for the tuner to get paid full price, rather than have to discount his work for the dealer. It was intended as a way to insure the dealer could afford first rate techs to represent him in the field. What this does, in fact, is to send the customer shopping for the cheapest tooner she can find, to not have to pay anything extra for her "free" tuning. This effectively cuts the capable technicians right out of the loop, and eliminates any incentive these capable techs might have to be inclined to cut the dealer any slack on in-store prep work and disaster recovery. This, in turn drives the dealer to look for someone cheap (and therefore almost certainly less capable) for repair work, and usually eliminates any hope of pre-delivery prep as a consequence. It also doesn't make for warm and fuzzy feelings when it comes to mutual referrals between capable techs and the dealer. All in all, good intentions notwithstanding, it seems to me to be a pretty stupid idea as it works here. Ron N
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