[pianotech] billing dilemma with pitch raises

[David Love]

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