My basic fee is based on a set amount of time which is enough to do a pitch correction and tuning (it takes me about 40 minutes to tune a piano and an additional 15 minutes to do a first pass correction). If the piano doesn't need a pitch correction and I finish the tuning in 40 minutes then they get 20 minutes of "other stuff" whatever I deem necessary. If what the piano needs runs over my basic 1 hour structure then I charge based on time. Severe pitch corrections, therefore, might result in an additional charge. Contrary to the frequent comments that we don't charge enough I think our bigger issue is that we aren't efficient enough. Anyway, an outline of me fee structure is on my website. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com -----Original Message----- From: "David Nereson" <da88ve at gmail.com> Sender: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 23:04:52 To: <pianotech at ptg.org> Reply-To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: [pianotech] billing dilemma with pitch raises Most tunings take me an hour and a half. And for that amount of time I charge $X. But often, after a pitch raise, which gets the piano pretty close to being in tune, the final fine tuning only takes an hour. Say the pitch raise took 1/2 hr, and the final tuning an hour. That's an hour an a half. How do I now justify charging extra for the pitch raise when a "plain vanilla" tuning also takes an hour and a half and I only charge $X for it? Or to look at it another way, if you charge $X per hour and base your tuning fee on that, then go do a tuning and pitch raise that only takes 1 1/2 hrs., but you still charge extra for the pitch raise, then now you're charging more than $X per hour. --David Nereson, RPT
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