Marshall In addition to what Tom said, when you get to a piano, you should be able to determine within 5 minutes what needs to be done to the piano. And if you don't have enough time to do all the work in the allotted time, explain to the customer that you need to come back on another day to finish the job, (or do the whole thing), and schedule yourself three or four hours to do the work. What you can also do is tell the customer that you need to take the action back to you shop where you have all your tools, supplies, equipment, parts, etc. Even if you can do the action work in her home, it's better to take the action back to your shop. I schedule my appointments an hour and half apart. When I get to a "new" piano that needs a lot of work, I do what I described. That way you don't have to bump your next appointment. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Marshall Gisondi <pianotune05 at hotmail.com> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Sun, Dec 16, 2012 12:25 pm Subject: [pianotech] scheduling Hi Everyone, Do any of you ever have scheduling trouble, namely you schedule two maybe three tunings and because the first piano is a total piece of junk you have to cancel and reschedue your next appointment due the work needed on piano number one? I did some things to add on new customers and it's working well. However, I'm getting pianos that haven't been tuned in ages. I mean I'm talking about pianos that haven't been tuned since Buddy Hollly sang Oh Boy, well maybe not quite that bad. lol I never know how bad a piano is unti I get there, and if I have other appointments lined up then I 'm stuck with a decision to make. Do I tell customer number one your piano needs too much work,can't tune it today because I have one or two other tunings after you? or, do I tell the other appointments they have to wait. Once they purchase the groupon I need to honor it since I've been paid already by groupon. I went yesterday to a Whitney spinet sigh groan burn piano. It was at least a whole step flat with a bunch of sticking keys. So I eased all of the sticking keys. then I tuned it in a different way because I was worried about the tension being even due to it being so low and out of whack. I played it and one couldn't even hear the right combinations of tones for the correct intervals. It made a honky tonk piano sound in tune. I tuned all the A's , F's etc like doing a temparement. I was taught this when a piano is restrung so that it equalizes the tension. I was worried that a string would break or something else. After 3 tunings, the first one done as I mentioned and the other two done the normal way the piano sounded pretty good. However, my day was pretty much shot. Customer number two had to get bumped. I thnk if I didn't stop and eat lunch with the first customer and his wife I still would have been delayed. I'm also finding that it's hard for me to do more than 3 a day due to the time factor of traveling from one to another. Philly is a huge area, plus I tune in areas of south NJ too. So any thoughts would be great. If any of you use a driver I'd like more info on that as well. My wife is getting overwhelmed trying to take me to all of these new tunings, keeping our place up, takign care of the kids she's our only driver. Sometimes she's stuck waiting with the kids while I work which is OK when they have thigns to do but late days are hard on them. So groupon is great in that I have new work but these two dilemas have me in a jam, the scheduling and my wife driving me plus lacking time to do everything else wives need to do. I help her etc as much as I can but I'm working like crazy now. thanks Marshall 215-510-9400 http:///www.phillytuner.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20121216/b41cff1f/attachment.htm>
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