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USER LOCATION: France
MAKE: KORG
MODEL: Krome 88
CONDITION: B-stock
PRICE PAID: 777€
DELIVERY CHARGE: included
VENDOR LOCATION: Europe
VENDOR NAME: Bax Shop
PURCHASE DATE: Jul 2018

You shouldn't mind it, musictalent is just one of many used piano dealer in where I live and they're doing some bullshit self-promotion, and it definitely backfired, and here in Vietnam it is common to see ancient DP selling at high price whereas good high-end DP with very reasonable price, as the dealer know nothing about piano, they just marketing and sell them at ANY price they consider it would be

USER LOCATION: Florida, USA
MAKE: Kawai
MODEL: CA98
CONDITION: New
PRICE PAID: $3995+tax = $4264
DELIVERY CHARGE: included
PURCHASE DATE: 11/24

changer: You did not say where you bought the piano.

First DP purchase. 3 years old, barely used. Loving the piano! Did I make a good deal?

USER LOCATION: Lund, Sweden
MAKE: YAMAHA
MODEL: CLP-575
CONDITION: Used(like new)
PRICE PAID: 14000 sek ($1550, €1370, £1220)
DELIVERY CHARGE: pickup
VENDOR LOCATION: Malmö, Sweden
VENDOR NAME: Private
PURCHASE DATE: 1/12-17

USER LOCATION: California, USA
MAKE: Yamaha
MODEL: NU1X
CONDITION: new
PRICE PAID: $4777
DELIVERY CHARGE: $125
VENDOR LOCATION: San Jose, California, USA
PURCHASE DATE: 12/6/2018

USER LOCATION: Toronto
MAKE: Kawai
MODEL: MP11SE
CONDITION: New
PRICE PAID: $3499 + TAX
DELIVERY CHARGE: Pick Up
VENDOR LOCATION: Toronto
PURCHASE DATE: Jul 2018

The only MPse in Turkey (I think). Two months of strange Byzantine dealings. Originally negotiating for used MP11 (overpaying) got the se almost by mistake for the same price ( cheaper than in the US). I got lucky. All very Turkish!

USER LOCATION: Istanbul
MAKE: Kawai
MODEL: MP11SE
CONDITION: New
PRICE PAID: $2600 inc. tax
DELIVERY CHARGE: None
VENDOR LOCATION: Istanbul
PURCHASE DATE: Dec 2018

I see what you did!

I think the intent was to provide information in this format:

I noticed that this has been forgotten, given that the thread goes back nine years!
It helps to be consistent because I pull the data into a spreadsheet, made available to all ... (see the Master Sticky thread).

USER LOCATION: UK
MAKE: Casio
MODEL: PX870
CONDITION: New
PRICE PAID: £725
DELIVERY CHARGE: Picked up from store
VENDOR LOCATION: Norwich UK
VENDOR NAME: Cookes Pianos
PURCHASE DATE: Dec 2018

** Store had huge selections of pianos for me to compare etc, salesman spent ages with me, helping me etc. The price was £749, I asked him if he could do anything with the price and the lowest he could go was £725.

The cheapest I could have bought it online delivered for was £649. That was a store about 500 miles away (in Aberdeen) . While it was tempting to save £76, I felt it also unfair. I would never buy without trying first, and if everyone tries in store and then buys online, soon we will have no stores left.

USER LOCATION: New Mexico
MAKE: Kawai
MODEL: CA78 Ebony Polish
CONDITION: New
PRICE PAID: $3800 (inclusive of tax and delivery)
DELIVERY CHARGE: Price included delivery from Los Angeles to New Mexico. Not assembled.
VENDOR LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
VENDOR NAME: Pierre’s Fine Pianos
PURCHASE DATE: Dec 2018

Pierre has a great in-store selection of all the Kawai DP’s. I was happy to get the CA78 in the ebony polish for under $4000, especially since it would need to be delivered to where I live in middle-of-nowhere New Mexico. There is a corporate Kawai store 6.5 hours away from me in Dallas, but the best price they’d offer over the phone was $4,000 (before delivery). I also spoke with a smaller Kawai dealer in Lubbock, TX, but they never bothered to follow up with a quote for the CA78.

Pierre was low pressure and seems to have a lot of good resources for getting items shipped inexpensively from the west coast. Kawai’s US headquarters are in the local Los Angeles area and I’m guessing most of the Kawai DPs in the country come through the Port there. I wouldn’t hesitate to call or email him if you wanted to get a quote on something, inclusive of shipping. Sounds like he gets a lot of out-of-state buyers, which isn’t a surprise. I think he said that CA98’s in ebony polish were going for around $4800, but I can’t remember for sure.

Thanks so much for this comment. Shopping for a piano in an area where the few piano stores seem to understand their monopolistic powers, I still had not considered the idea of buying a piano over the phone from a distant store and having it delivered here! Did you call a lot of out-of-state stores before you settled on this one? Did you get any pushback - stores that said stuff like, "you should go to your local retailers", etc. etc?

The Kawai dealer in Lubbock, TX was my closest store. I visited the store in person, tried the lone Kawai DP they had on the floor (a CN27), mentioned what I was looking for (CA78 or older CA67), then left them my contact info, hoping to hear back from them on a price. Which I never did.

I then contacted the Kawai corporate store in Dallas because their website advertised a CS8 floor model for sale ($4,000). They followed up by saying that they could do a new CA78 for the same price. I’m honestly not sure if that 4K price was going to include the shipping or not (the CS8 shipping was going to be expensive, because it was already assembled).

I’m originally from the Los Angeles area, which is why I was able to stop by Pierre’s Fine Pianos when I was home over the Thanksgiving holiday. So I did have a chance to personally meet Pierre and try out the various digital pianos in store.

I had already done the typical 65% off MSRP price to come to a figure in my head for what a decent price might be on an ebony polish CA78 ($5799 x 0.65 = $3,769). I walked by the CA78 at Pierre’s, and to my surprise, it had a price tag of $3,795 sitting on it. On top of that, I’m out of state, so Pierre said that he wouldn’t have to charge me tax, and that he would probably be able to secure a delivery price and keep it at the flat price of $3,800.

Kinda funny, but after I was done poking at the piano, I started saying “Soooo....great piano, but there’s one issue...” To which, he jokingly cut me off and said “You live in New York?” Apparently, he gets out of state buyers all the time, so that put me at ease, being that I live in New Mexico.

Pierre’s is one of the more infamous high-end piano stores in Los Angeles, so I’m sure he sells a decent number of of 5- and 6-six figure acoustic pianos in any given year. From what I gathered, he seemed to vaguely indicate that he likes to keep his sales volume up with Kawai to retain his wholesale discounts. Maybe churning these digital pianos goes a long way towards helping him pad his stats? <~ pure speculation!

Was all of this salesman mumbo jumbo? Critics can think what they want, but it felt like a good price and Pierre did his part to call around and get good price on delivery. I briefly worked in trucking sales out of the LA port, so I know that good shipping costs often come down to timing and a Rolodex of relationships. These DPs-in-a-box are tasty dense and durable cargo, if you can find the right truck going in the right direction (all roads lead out of LA!). And just to clarify, the piano is coming via a very reputable shipper (YRC Freight), and not some mom-and-pop trucking shenanigans.

In fact, a real worry about smaller mom-and-pop piano shops is if their first instinct on shipping quotes is to simply call FedEx/UPS/USPS. Egads! Those quotes are always going to be outrageous. As I said, YRC is perfectly reputable, but definitely more of a “deep cut” shipper if you’re not familiar with the world of trucking companies.

Anyway, I suppose my search ran the gamut of mom and pop shops (Lubbock, TX), a higher volume store (Pierre’s) and the corporate Kawai store in Dallas. The only “go to your local retailer” sentiment I can conceive of would maybe come from the corporate store. Maybe that’s why they weren’t able to offer a discount below $4,000, maybe they leave it up to local stores to offer deeper discounts below a certain point.

Feel free to give Pierre a call, if you want to talk price and shipping. When we first met in person, I even mentioned that I had previously read about his store on these forums. YMMV on final price, but $4,000 and below seems like a good starting point right now on the CA78 in ebony polish.

PW is not letting me edit my above post....I meant to say “65% of MSRP” not ‘off’ MSRP. I can’t have y’all thinking I’m terrible at the maths!

I'd love to give Pierre a call but I'm literally on the other coast, and as you describe it, the shipping is from his store to the customer - not a drop shipping from the nearest distributor. In that case, the shipping price from his store can't possibly be good. But you tell me as you've been in the trucking business. Would the coast-to-coast shipping cost just kill any discount?

Yes, it's always best to realize that there is seldom any "monopoly".IAnd you can break the so-called monopoly in a number of ways.

Buying elsewhere (even far far elsewhere) is one option.

Another way derives from the recognition that the dealer's "monopoly" faces a powerful competitor. You.
The money that the dealer wants is in your wallet. You have total monopoly power over that money. So use your own power to strike a deal.

Always remember that the dealer wants your money more than you want his piano.
It's all about attitude.

USER LOCATION: Germany
MAKE: Yamaha
MODEL: NU1X
CONDITION: new
PRICE PAID: 4.300€
DELIVERY CHARGE: 0€
VENDOR LOCATION: Essen, Germany
PURCHASE DATE: 12/5/2018

If you’re on a different coast, then perhaps you can try working with a higher-volume dealer from a nearby metropolitan area (NY/NJ/DC)? I was also a little surprised that he ordered the piano through corporate HQ in Carson, CA and not my nearest corporate outlet in Dallas (6.5 hours away).

Again though, I have no idea how Kawai and its resellers are structured. Maybe it’s regional, so Pierre can only order through his West coast corporate supplier, and thus no access to have it shipped via Dallas. Already, it seems like there are plenty of rules in this realm, such as piano resellers only being able to advertise prices online for CA48 and CA58s, while the CA78/CA98 prices can only be had by contacting the reseller.

Or, maybe start by contacting your nearest corporate store and see what price they’re willing to quote you over the phone. If it’s a corporate store, they should be pretty upfront about making you a starting price offer, and maybe answering whether local dealers might be able to go lower than the price they are offering. Also, I would think that a Kawai corporate store would have a pretty decent handle on sourcing competitive shipping prices. Maybe, maybe not? Try and follow up by asking if their shipping quote is simply via UPS/FedEx (ie. likely an expensive option).

I feel the whole point of this “Prices Paid” thread is to empower the consumer on street pricing for what, honestly, is kind of an old-school method that piano stores have of pricing things. Haggling is not the most comfortable thing for most Americans to do, and even in the car industry there has been a big push to get legit “prices paid” access to informed buyers. Someone above mentioned that all these Kawai digital pianos are coming from the same factory in Asia, and yet, they are priced wildly different in different regions of the world.

I wonder how many buyers out there are sticking with the sub-$1,000 digital piano/slab keyboard range, simply because they are able to see more legit “bottom line” pricing online. Whereas, they don’t realize that they actually have an additional 35% or more buying power for, what informed buyers know, are only “starting point” prices for better, ‘furniture’ quality digital pianos.

People don’t like to feel like they’re potentially getting screwed. And especially in this DP realm, you’re getting a lot of novice players, who are buying on the expectations that they, their spouse or children are going to take to the instrument. That probably goes for first-time acoustic buyers as well. They’re afraid to buy used, because they don’t know enough to know if the piano is a clunker. And to buy new, seems very pricey out of pocket for something they’re not 100% sure will be used. Additionally, unlike a car, a piano is a ‘want’ not a ‘need,’ so that introduces extra hesitation and aversion to having to ‘negotiate’ a price.

The sub-$4k range of digital pianos is potentially very attractive in that case. And at least in the “furniture-style” realm you are potentially getting a ‘two-fer’ of buying a piano, that even if not extensively used, is still a piece of decent looking living room furniture. Otherwise, young families are going be much quicker to conclude, “Well....let’s just get the kids a cheap $500 keyboard, and if they take to it, maybe we’ll invest in a better piano down the line.”

I’d argue too that even the Yamaha Arius line or the Kawai CN or KDP pianos are designed more for a bedroom than for really tying together a nice living room. But at least you can get upfront pricing on those models, despite the fact that they’re only a few hundred dollars less than you could potentially buy a polished ebony Yamaha CLP-625 for...if you’re willing to negotiate...

Very good first posts by EarthtoGreg, indeed! It is actually easier to buy a car as multiple dealers compete for your business, whereas with a higher-end piano most of us are stuck with one authorized retailer within driving distance, especially for Kawai and Roland.

By the way, the pricing posted for sub-$1,000 pianos online or locally is not really the bottom line. It is not difficult to get 10-15% off this price and even 20% is possible by waiting for an advertised percentage-off sale or by simply asking. But I get your point about the lack of transparency about the pricing of higher-end pianos at specialty piano stores, and how that affects a buyer's aspirations.

Thank you for the detail on your experience with Pierre's Fine Pianos; certainly a dealer worth calling. You chose a great piano with the CA78 and got a great price as well ... well done!