Buying pianos out of state
2001-12-19 by Carol Beigel
I know that several on the list have purchased DKVs out of state and have had very good luck with this. Yamaha offers an excellent warranty so the basics are covered. However, as a piano technician, I find this a most distressing practice. I honestly think you don't always get such a good deal. Let's get real about a few things. It's all about money; and in a transaction where a buyer gets "a real deal", somebody in that chain is expected to pay more than their fair share. I'm still shuddering over the poor piano technician who spent 10 hours PLUS installing the Quiet Time on a DKV. Somehow, I doubt the technician made the same amount of money he or she would have made had they spent the same amount of time tuning pianos! I have seen pianos "dumped" on out of state customers. They often have cosmetic blemishes or problems that a local customer would continue to complain about until the problem was fixed. THink about it. If you were a piano dealer, you would always have some stock that for whatever reason is going to be hard to sell. The dealer can either pay his tech to fix the problem, or save money and ship it out of state. Or perhaps the dealer's forklift man accidently "dropped" the piano still in the packing crate - another good candidate to ship far, far away! There are very few piano technicians who can properly service ANY of these hybrid pianos whether they are PianoDisc, Pianomation or Disklavier. If you live in a large metropolitan area, these are probably the best paid technicians as well. These techs usually work out monetary arrangements with the local dealers that benefit both parties. An out of state purchase is not part of this arrangement for either priority servicing or attractive service rates. The biggest problem I see is that no local person has an investment in your satisfaction with your big ticket purchase. Your local public school system sure didn't see a dime either because you avoided sales tax. How satisfied would you be if some small little blemish bothered you (not covered under warranty) or some small, little irritating, intermittent noise (not covered under warranty)really bothered you? Be prepared to pay a hefty hourly rate for such service up front and prepare yourself to negotiate a payment for such service from your out of state dealer. I still find the Golden Rule applies to business - deal fairly and fairly you will be dealt with. If you bleed every last dollar out of a deal, you will have also bled every ounce of goodwill out it too! Carol Beigel _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx