It's certainly possible that I've misunderstood what Wim wrote earlier, but as I ecall the dealer asked Wim to do the job and send the bill to the manufacturer, ithout it ever being authorized. You usually don't get to spend someone else's oney without them saying it's OK first. Mark Wisner Mark You are right, that the dealer asked me to do the repairs, and send the invoice to the Samick. But wouldn't that be considered "prior" authorization? Or are you saying that I should have asked Samick if it's OK to do the work? The problem in this particular situation was that it took me two hours to figure out what I needed to do and an other hour to make the repairs. What was I supposed to do in that case? Tell the customer "I know what the problem, but now I need to get permission to do the work. I'll see you later". That doesn't make sense. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Mark Wisner <markwisner at earthlink.net> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Wed, Oct 28, 2009 10:11 am Subject: Re: [pianotech] Don't work for this manufacturer In the case Israel relates below, it seems like the proper thing to do would be o notify the manufacturer that you have discovered a defect that you believe hould be covered and corrected under warranty. If the maker agrees, they'll uthorize you to do the job, then you send them the bill when the work is done. It's certainly possible that I've misunderstood what Wim wrote earlier, but as I ecall the dealer asked Wim to do the job and send the bill to the manufacturer, ithout it ever being authorized. You usually don't get to spend someone else's oney without them saying it's OK first. Mark Wisner >Greg, Good for you. But it isn't quite that simple. What would you do in a case that ou find a serious warranty issue in a new piano that the new owner isn't quite ware of? Say - backchucking (pulley) keys. It doesn't bother them now - but ooner or later their checking will go to hell, and the keys will get noisy. Too oon for the age of the piano - but probably after the warranty expires. So you re going to tell the owner about this - and charge them a fairly steep fee to ix it right - and make them chase the manufacturer for the cost? Good f.....n uck, Greg. Most of the time they'll think you are trying to pull a fast one on hem. OK, so you'll just keep your mouth shut and not say anything, right? Would hat be ethical? There is more to the business of piano tuning than just doing the work and ollecting the fee. If we want to be treated like professionals, we need to ehave in a professional manner - which sometimes means dealing with anufacturers and other large companies, and jumping through whatever hoops they ake us jump through in order to protect our clients' best interests. And ometimes it's a hassle - but hey, that's all part of the business... Israel Stein >>-----Original Message----- >>From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf f Mark Wisner >>Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:21 AM >>To: pianotech at ptg.org >>Subject: Re: [pianotech] Don't work for this manufacturer >>Wim wrote..."I hope that this episode will be a learning experience on amick's part..." >>Wim, I've no doubt Samick, and Ms. Jones, have learned something from this xperience, but I suspect the lesson they learned wasn't the one you intended to each. >>The "learning experience" with Samick could have been avoided by following a ule I learned a long time ago (the hard way) which is: Whoever requests the ervice pays the bill. For example; When a party requested that I submit my bill o a third party for payment I'd ask if they were confident that the third party ill pay the bill in a timely fashion? And when the inevitable "yes" response ollowed, my reply was along the lines of "Fine, then you won't have a problem etting reimbursed". >>Mark Wisner -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20091028/e85e23c4/attachment-0001.htm>
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