Yes, discounts sometimes opens the door to all kinds of financial abuse. Sounds like .......... the teacher is teaching to make extra money and has an extremely tight budget and/or enjoys bargaining with you. the teacher over stepped her bounds as a teacher when she assessed the student's piano the student's piano is in very sad shape and needs hundreds of dollars in basic repairs the student's parents are relying on information from a proudly biased and unqualified source giving group discounts on one invoice for numerous households is a bad idea. you've walked into a log jam and need to protect youself before it all cuts loose and smothers you. My advice ................... focus on the money making opportunity. Present your case to the student's parents and use concise and clear language when describing the repairs and the need for them in the order of priority. realize that the teacher is most likely not the type of person you'll want on your database, even though she's a possible source of income. If you're looking for peace and contentment, steer clear of bargain hunters. if it were me, I'd probably charge a bit more here and there just to cover expenses and if they went for the job, great!! If not, I have other calls to do. being late to a call is sometimes a major problem for people with inflexable schedules and can set the stage for future hassles. When making appointments with such households, express the uncertain nature of our work, traffic, and other reasons for being unable to keep up with the clock as the day wears on. All of this is learned after the fact I realize and so now we are left with repairing relations as well as a piano. This all consumes more of our time. Scheduling can be an art sometimes. Second guessing all that causes tardiness is a tough game of trial and error. You have numerous tools to use to overcome this. Scheduling language, timing, prior commitments, and quality expectations of yourself all come into play here. You'll most likely be trafficing this one for a while yet to come. Good luck and I hope you make some money. Lar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100323/e84ad0fc/attachment.htm>
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