charging for downtime?

[David Love]

I probably would have tried to schedule all six on one day, three in the
morning, three in the afternoon, or split the six such that you could do one
group on one day and one on another, or arrange to do it on a Saturday (all
six).  I think it's fair to tell them that you don't want to hang around for
2 or more hours waiting for the availability of one piano and try and work
out some schedule that accommodates both of you.  But if you didn’t do that
in advance and there's no way around it now, you're stuck.  

David Love
davidlovepianos@comcast.net



Hello list,

Here is a situation I will be facing next week (times adjusted for the sake
of simplicity).

I've been hired to tune 3 pianos at a school which is about 20 miles away.
Two of the pianos are in the same room; the third is in a different room.
Because of class schedules, the first two must be tuned between 8:00 a.m.
and 12:00 noon (no problem there), but the third one is only available after
2:00 p.m., leaving me with a two-hour gap.

Here's the question: is it reasonable to charge something for the two hours
of downtime?  I've already cut them a break on the tuning price, since there
are six pianos involved (I tuned three today, and am going back next week to
do the other three).

Thanks,
Paul Mulik, Joplin MO