Hi David: You are still the master of your destiny, so the choice is entirely yours whether or not to charge for this visit. Most of the time I would, for the kind of reasons you give. Sometimes I don't charge my regular, good, longtime customers - but they always offer to compensate me because they do place a value on my time. My choice. One way around this is to make clear to the customer before the visit that there will likely be a service charge if the cause of the buzzing is unrelated to anything you did when you were there to perform your services. If I find my missing tool inside the piano, obviously I would not charge them. It is important to remember that one of the ways our customers get their cues on how much value to place on OUR time from US. The irony is that if we give away too much or charge too little, then too many people will correspondingly place little value to it. That is obviously the opposite reaction to what we would hope for from our customers. If the customer needs the explanation you just gave to us as to your investment of time and loss of work time that could be compensated elsewhere, give it to her and unapologetically, politely, and with a friendly smile on your face, HAND HER THE BILL. As for myself, I choose not to work for people who want me to work for free. My policy where there is a honest dispute is to give a little but not a lot. Giving away 12 hours labor free for work that you did not contract for falls in that category of giving away a lot. If you feel bullied by the customer, it is because you allowed yourself to be bullied. Losing that customer is no great loss because you don't want that kind of customer. And you likely will not retain them as a customer after you have given everything away, because they know they have worked you and so don't wish to face their victim. The vast majority of our customers are nice, honest, and fair people whom it is a pleasure to work for. But not everyone is, and we have to say no on occasion. And we are the only person who can make that choice to say no. Best wishes, Will Truitt -----Original Message----- From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of David Nereson Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2009 6:50 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: [pianotech] call-backs you can't charge for 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
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