Technicians are asked by stores to take care of problems with new pianos. In some cases the store pays the technician. But sometimes the store ask the technician to send a bill to the manufacturer. In all my years of doing this, the manufacturer usually pays within a month, and sometimes even as soon as a week. But I want to warn you about one manufacturer that doesn't pay in a timely manner. I am telling you my story, so that hopefully other technicians won’t have the same problem as I have had. Last June the dealer for whom I do some work asked me to make a case repair on one of the pianos in his store. At about the same time, he asked me to make a minor repair on a piano of the same brand at a customer’s home. The dealer asked if I would send the bills to the manufacturer. That was at the end of June. I finally got a check at the end of September, 3 months later, but only after five or six e-mails back and forth, where each time the factory representative promised a check would be sent “right away”. About 2 weeks before I got my check, the excuses were they she had been gone for a week, and the accountant had gone on vacation. In the middle of August I did some more work on the same piano, and sent another bill to the manufacturer. I still haven’t been paid, even though the factory representative told me, after she admitted never having received the original bill, she would personally “walk the bill to the accounting department”. Now when I send an e-mail, I don't even get an answer back. I am telling all of you this to warn you NOT to do any work for the Samick Piano Company. If a dealer asks you to send the bill directly to Samick, either don’t do the work, or tell the dealer you want to get paid by him/her. The dealer will probably hesitate, because from what I’ve been told, Samick doesn’t reimburse its dealers, either. Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician 94-505 Kealakaa Str. Mililani, Oahu, HI 96789 808-349-2943 www.Bleespiano.com Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091027/830c8959/attachment.htm>
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