[pianotech] call-backs you can't charge for

[David Nereson]

    A client called and said her daughter hears several buzzing 
notes.  I just tuned it a few weeks ago and didn't hear any 
buzzing.  But I go to check it out.  Client wasn't home --  
forgot I was coming.  Fortunately there was a housekeeper who 
let me in.  I play up and down the scale, and sure enough, 
there's some buzzing underneath somewhere.  I open the bottom 
panel and see two small, rusty woodscrews lodged between the 
plate and the bottom board, one of them against the soundboard. 
I remove them, and, "Presto!" -- no more buzzing.  (Why couldn't 
they have buzzed when I was tuning a few weeks ago?)
    Suddenly client shows up (was walking the dogs).  I show her 
the screws, tell her there's no more buzzing, and she says, "Oh, 
thank you soooo much!" in a tone that's so grateful I can tell 
she thinks I came to remove the problem as a huge gratis favor, 
and that certainly I don't intend to charge anything.  (When 
they say, "Do I owe you anything?" then you KNOW you'd better 
say, "No, that's OK -- I was in the neighborhood" or something 
similar.)
       I spent a half-hour driving, two minutes finding the 
problem, ten minutes waiting around for the client, and another 
half-hour back to the shop -- 1 1/4 hours for no compensation. 
Sometimes you just get the "vibe" from the client that they 
think any buzz, noise, tinnyness, or other quirk that shows up 
within, say, a month after you tuned it, is your fault, since it 
wasn't doing that before you tuned it, and therefore must've 
been caused by your "tuning" and you should come fix it for 
free.
    Oh sure, you can say, "I have a $xx minimum billing for 
service calls," but then you lose the customer and any referrals 
from them.
    I've even done 12 hours' extra labor on a large 
reconditioning job to get rid of problems they implied were my 
fault, even though these things were not in the job estimate, 
but from their tone of voice and attitude you can tell that it's 
either fix everything for free or get into a big argument, much 
unpleasantness, and maybe even a lawsuit.
    But of course you can't deduct the value of your time on 
your tax return, since the IRS doesn't see your time as being 
worth anything.
    --David Nereson, RPT