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I have to disagree with pianos not suffering by not being tuned. My reason being this; what other way is the client to know if something is or has gone wrong with their piano?

For example, let's say that it is way to dry. Sooner or later, we will have loose hammer flanges... Possibly loose hammer heads and more. Now the hammer shifts left or right striking in different locations on the hammer. Then, this happens to yet another and another. In worse case scenarios, hammers will literally be flopping all over the place even striking the neighboring strings and hanging up on its neighboring hammer head.

Or, a center pin slowly moves out. Same thing happens... Hammer flops all over. Now, the piano goes untuned for 15 years or longer afterward. What is happening to the piano all of this time? Unnecessary 'extreme' wear and tear. They have no idea this is going on because the piano is not being tuned.

Consequently, tuning is the only way for the customer to be made aware if anything is not right besides the tuning.

Not to mention how badly out of tune the piano will be and the poor kids and everyone else who has to listen to it stay that way and play on it.

I agree with Jerry on this one. We're used to hearing pianos in tune all the time, but people who get their pianos tuned at whatever interval only hear it in tune after we tune it. Then the tuning starts to wander off but the customer doesn't really notice because the drift is imperceptible from one day to the next. 6 months, or 27 months later, the thing is out of tune but the customer has been going along for the ride and doesn't realize how out of tune it was until we show up and tune it and they have something to compare it to. I always enjoy hearing a customer re-acquaint themselves with a tuned piano!

Some people like me drive a vehicle thats 15 years old has 200,000 miles and runs and drives like new.
Other people buy new vehicles every few years.

I believe to many people in america have forgot that properly maintaining their property is financially in their best interest. However, since every individual has a right to make there own choices, the best we can do is customize our services to each individual. In the end if you have a life long customer or a one time pitch raise and tuning its more money than you would have without that customer.

I, too agree with Jerry. Pianos deteriorate with out regular maintenance. That's the big problem with institutional pianos - Everyone claims lack of money to tune, repair, or adjust the piano, and they deteriorate.

I am more in agreement with Ryan on this. I think you need to make the distinction between a valuable instrument and the spinets and 100 year old pianos that may not be worth much more than the price of a tuning. I would also make a distinction between a piano that is being played and one that isn't. If a piano isn't being used it's not advisable to push a client into tuning it on a regular schedule because they may assume that you are more concerned about your income than their own best interests. If it is a valuable instrument then it is in the customers best interests to maintain the tuning to avoid undue strain on the bridges and maintain a balanced tension on the soundboard over time.

Going back to the original post, I think it is always problematic for any business to blame their customers for an unwanted result. An individual customer may be a bad apple but when a lot of them are causing problems for us then it is always something that we are doing or not doing and we need to step back and learn from the situation. As an example, a few years ago I was getting very frustrated because I was getting nuisance calls from piano owners from all over the map, literally from thousands of miles away. It was driving me crazy. My initial reaction was "how can people be so stupid?" if you had a plumbing problem would you a call a plumber in another city, thousands of miles away, to get their opinion? After analyzing the problem it occurred to me that I hadn't communicated the right message on my website so I changed the text, and made it clear that I didn't accept calls from outside my service area. Then I put Paypal buttons on my site for people outside my area who wanted piano information from me. Now if they want to waste my time, they pay for it. It's only $20 so it isn't a money maker but at least I don't feel put upon.

The point is "the times they are a changin", everyone screens their calls nowadays. Telemarketers have have ruined the telephone as a promotional tool. It use to be that there was only one tap drawing from the well of piano tuning customers but now there is text and email and they draw as much water from the well as the phone so now the old tap has less flowing out of it than it used to. Technology is moving really fast. We all need to move with it or someone else will be tuning those pianos. The key to a successful piano tuning and service business isn't in coercing reluctant clients into tuning their piano more often, it's in finding the customers do want to have a tuned piano to play on. They're out there. It may be more difficult in one geographic area than another but your still doing business in the wealthiest country in the world.

If the customers are the problem then that's really bad news because in that case it would be up to them to fix it, but the good news is, they aren't. They're telling you something. They don't like the calls. Time to shift gears.

I agree. Here’s an anecdote. Just picked up a new customer that had a tuner from the closest city, but would balk at coming 40 miles to tune. They found me by doing an internet search. (I have my name on a couple of free listings, but am not in the yellow pages.) They knew that there must be a local tuner because there were churches and schools with pianos, but they didn’t call and ask them for a referral. Neither did they look on the bulletin board at the grocery store/post office and find my card. (It is the only store for many miles.) They used the internet!

Pianos haven’t changed much, but communication sure has. I am sure I could double my business in a year if I did the website/phone thing, but I don’t want to get swamped. It looks like a busy fall coming up as it is. Myself, I am offering a local service more than building income.

Wow!! Allot of good advice and interesting ideas. I've been gone but was surprised to find still more input this morning and Thank-You everyone who contributed their opinions.

I'm feeling much better now because of the comments left here for me. I'm afraid I'm old school. I have a cell phone but don't know how to text. I don't like where the world has gone or is going. To much information out there. Technology will be our downfall. In the meantime I need to change gears and learn how to play the game. The only thing I am comfortable in doing is calling someone and it seems they don't like that anymore and I don't like it either but still, after all, I am the piano tuner and it would be nice if they made an exception for me and allot still do. It's just a few who don't but I've been expecting to much from the customer and times are hard everywhere and only getting harder.

I was very frustrated the day I wrote that original post. On the other hand, I have plenty of work this week.....lol

Still......if I had to wait for people to just "call me"....I'd starve.

Bill,

My dad said to me while he was in his 40's and he repeated that many times as he aged, that if we don't keep up with the latest and greatest we, are the ones that will become set in our ways and fall behind the competition.

Using an excuse if that's what it was intended as; (no offense) I'm old school....Technology will be our downfall or what have you, as an excuse to not learn it (again, if that's the reason for saying it so you don't have to learn it) and to continue doing things the old way, card filing things for example, rather than computerizing it. Booking appointments by writing them into an appointment book rather than scheduling them online, or letting the client go to your website to schedule online from there, well, we will fall further and further behind our competition as they do what the client wants making it as easy as possible for the client to schedule things.

Check out my website for example and see for your self what I have done in the past month. I changed things around considerably.

Dad also meant that we must continually educate ourselves. Keeping up means just that, keeping up in all ways. That was his philosophy and I agree with it. I'm sure others won't but, that's their choice too.

Whether or not we like keeping up or changing with the times matters not at all to our customers or to others that do keep up, and change.

As Jeff said, people use the internet to look things up. I can find what I want on the internet a lot fast than I can by thumbing through a phone book which I never do any longer.

Nice updates to your site Jerry. It really looks much better. I see you have an online appointment booking service now. My question is whether this accounts for location? I do my own, just so I can limit driving. Driving has gotten more and more tiresome as I've gotten older. But something like this does look attractive. I would use it if it would at least keep me in the same part of town.

Absolutely true, Jerry! Online scheduling is one of the best things I've ever done, and I hope you're liking it too!

Another thing I do now is accept credit cards. The response for that is overwhelming. Customers want their air miles, Citi points, etc. I go through SquareUp. They give you a free reader for your smartphone. No merchant account, no monthly fees, no minimums, and a reasonable 2.75% swipe fee.

Thanks Roy,

No, it does not account for location but so far, I've not encountered any problems with that and if I do, I will just change the appointment or cancel it if is outside of my traveling area with an explanation of course.

I do the majority of scheduling online myself right now. Although, anyone can schedule if they like.

It is a GREAT backup system too. Plus, it remembers everything so the next time I need to make an appointment with "Roy Peters" that is all I need to type in. It will auto remember the rest and fill it in for me. It also sends a confirmation email NOW to the customer for the date, day, and time of our appointment with what we discussed.

24 hours ahead of time, it sends them an email reminder of our appointment the next day. I have asked every single person that I have scheduled or who has scheduled it themselves how they like it. Every single one just ADORES IT! They love it!

Seeing as how I tune so many pianos at Calvin College, it has fast become extremely handy for them and for myself.

People have no idea how much time I spent returning their calls almost every day, or playing phone tag with them and playing email tag with them. Etc. This is a true time saver.

Since I have implemented this new scheduling system, we have virtually, almost, eliminated email contact and most phone calling. But for emergencies.

There are the occasional times where I may have to open up an appointment slot for them when I have a day scheduled off for example and I received an emergency tuning from them; that happened today. But still, it saves me a TON OF TIME making calls, returning calls, and emailing.

Today, they sent me a brief email telling me of the requested date. I opened it up, told them so and then they booked the appointment accordingly and that was that. It auto sends and syncs the scheduling information to my calendar.

On my telephone, I tell people that they can go directly to my website to book the appointment. Many of them do just that.

I chose to list my prices on my website to avoid price shoppers who I am frankly, sick to death of. I haven't had to return price shoppers calls wasting my time since.

Loren DiGiorgi (THANK YOU LOREN!) uses it too and is the one who got me started using it. I've only been using mine for about, oh, a month or so??? Maybe 6 weeks? He's been using the same booking system for a lot longer and gets 5-10 appointments a day. He says that makes any additional driving worth it, not having to return so many calls at night.

Whoa, I don't think I ever got 10! Easily 5 on some days though.

Whoops. Thanks for the correction Loren. I thought wrong!

By the Way Roy I have this posted on my website too. "Do I live in your service area?

I service pianos in the following areas of Western Michigan: Kent, Montcalm, Muskegon, Ottawa counties, and other cities in the surrounding areas. I localize Grand Rapids and its surrounding areas. While these are most common, I encourage you to contact me and discuss tuning, even if you do not see your county, city, or township listed. If you book a tuning and it is not on a day when I'm in your area, I may contact you to reschedule."

That helps to inform them where I do travel.

OK. So this is the same one that Loren posted a while back? I can certainly see the attraction. I'll look at it again. If it had a feature to help with routing, I would be signing up yesterday.

Yes sir, it sure is.

I sent them a suggestion about doing something like that for routing. They said they do not have that feature available at the moment and then suggested that I pick certain dates where I travel NW, SE, SW, NE and post those on the site for people to choose from. Yes.... I told him how stupid I thought that idea was. I said "KISS." Keep it simple stupid.... So, hopefully, they will work on it.

It wouldn't have to actually route. The same general direction would be nice.

many of you seem to drive a lot!
Talking of customers, each technician meet his customers type in the long run.
it may depend of the quality of service he provides but not only.

The pairing technician/customer is done automatically and naturally.
I strongly believe that.

I drive close to 25,000 miles a year. Some of you probably drive more than that in larger cities. I have a certain distance that I will travel and no further or it is no longer worth the drive out there and I won't drive out 30 miles somewhere for just one tuning. Well, I will, if it fills a hole but, I try not to do that. One tuning is better than no tunings... That makes it 1 hour round trip in which time I could have tuned a 2nd piano. So, routing is important to me too.

Right Roy. Having the capabilities as the owner and payer of the website scheduling program, we should have these abilities to limit travel. I don't have the answer. I do know that I do not want one person scheduling me 29 miles west of my home and the next person scheduling me 29 miles east of my home making it a 60 mile trip the opposite direction again. So far, that's not happened but, like I said, I would change it if it did. Maybe Loren has suggestions for that one?

Loren?

Well Jer, I look at it this way. I make service calls. The nature of my business is that I drive from piano to piano. Sometimes I do go 30 miles in one direction and 30 miles in another.

I look at it this way:

1. When I'm working, it's all about the customer's convenience. When I'm not working, its all about my convenience. So...I go all out when I'm "on the job," and when I'm off the job, the voicemail takes all my calls!

2. I think the added income and business generated by the scheduling system, plus the literal hours of phone time it saves me, outweigh the occasional trips out of my way.

I guess in the end, I'd rather have 1 tuning in the time I could have done two rather than no tunings because I was holding out for two.

That probably won't work for everyone, but I'm content.

Good answer Loren! Thanks!