Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum "prices paid" thread?

The DP forum has a very lovely prices paid thread. Any particular reason that one doesn't exist on the acoustic side? Just curious

I have no interest in telling you what I paid.

Why?

Because it gets too involved in all the particulars, especially when buying a high end piano.

I have posted about what the differences might be from one dealer to another if you care to search the archives.

Things like, what do they do for prep? What do they do for after care? Where are they located? and on and on.

Piano prices will be different when you consider WHO and WHERE you are purchasing.

There can only be a list if you list ALL THE PARTICULARS of the purchase.

You are free to start a prices paid thread if you like. It is my personal opinion (FWIW) that posting prices paid for new and used acoustic pianos can be very controversial, divisive, and combative at times.

The prices posted cannot be verified, and some dealers feel threatened when prices for new pianos are posted on the forum. I’ll admit that the pricing of new pianos can be very confusing and hard to understand; such is the nature of the piano business. New (and used) acoustic piano prices vary from dealer to dealer and region to region (country to country). There are a lot of variables involved.

The “Piano Buyer” is probably the best source of information on piano pricing.

Rick

Thanks for the feedback, you two. You make good points. My post wasn't meant as a challenge as to why there isn't such a thread, but rather pure curiosity as I see many people making discrete posts on if a deal is good or not.

Gomer, I’ve posted my personal opinion on prices here a few times myself. I’m not up on new piano prices, but I know what I think is a good price on a used piano… based on my hobby and pastime of looking at used pianos for sale on Craigslist and eBay.

With that said, I know it can seem like “us against them” when it comes to posting prices paid for new or used acoustic pianos. The consumer wants the lowest price they can reasonably (or unreasonably) get, and the dealer wants the highest price they can get or the market will bear. Many members here do decide to post the prices they paid. It is not against the forum rules, per-se.

I want the consumer, or piano buyer, to get the best value for their dollar they can, and I want to see the dealers stay in business. We need the dealers… many of them have suffered enough as it is since the great depression of the 21 century.

I think the Piano World Forums is, by far, the best thing going for piano shoppers, and dealers, in terms of education and information sharing, and not so much just prices paid.

Rick

I remember one lady here once wanted to know if she got a good deal on the Kawai upright she bought.
Apparently the price she got was so good that one of the dealers online here personally contacted the dealer that had sold it to her in order to berate him for selling it at such a price.
The first dealer let the buyer know that he was contacted and obviously she felt absolutely mortified.
I guess she didn't realize how truly nasty some of these people are.
Knowing that there's dealers out there like that I don't think it is a good idea to have people post what they got their new pianos for.

I do know of one friend who got a particularly good deal on a Chinese piano and the dealer asked him to keep the price to himself if he could and not let other dealers know what he sold it for, so apparently this is not uncommon in the industry.

I don't see any problem with people saying what they purchased used pianos for though.

I think that's why people don't post prices on acoustic pianos.

Its not in the sellers best interest that prices get shared. I know because I got out of the new car selling business when the invoice price list and internet met. Just about everyone coming in after 2000 new the price the dealer had paid for a car from the manufacturer. After that new car selling became purely a volume game which I don't think the Piano business can sustain.

Gomer, this is something I have thought about too. Now I see the readons why no such thread exists. Another thing to keep in mind is that in the DP section there are very few dealers who are posting. Here it is alost 50-50 (not quite, but still) which is great I think.

It's interesting that sharing prices is so taboo. When I bought a car, I had no difficulty finding the wholesale price that dealers pay including promotional kickbacks from the manufacturer. On car buying message boards, people frequently share not only their price, but the name of the dealership that gave it to them. Publicly. I see absolutely nothing unethical about this. Dealers thrive on information asymmetry, and will absolutely gouge you if you don't do your homework.

I'm surprised that resources such as Fine's guide continue to disguise prices with an undisclosed markup (which I presume is 40-50%). Why is information asymmetry so important to protect, even to the author of the piano buying guide? Believe it or not, some people may be sympathetic to the dealer's position and offer a fair profit if they know what his numbers really are.

That's why I got out of the new car salesman business. People would come in and literally say: "The price invoice for that Mazda 3 is $x and your a dealership with y on the lot so you would have gotten a $z kicbkack. Therefore, I'll offer you $x-$z+$250.

My former colleagues now tell me that many new car sales are now done via the internet. This is progress and great for the buyer, not so good for the seller.

I was lucky enough to be young enough to change careers.

Absolutely. I don't see it as a negative thing though. There are still car dealers making boatloads of money on volume. Perhaps the best (most successful) dealers used to be those with charisma and "salesmanship," and now the best dealers are those who can really execute on the operations side.

I have informed people of some accurate recent price quotes I got in a metro area and they have been so much cheaper than their price they think you are lieing. Go figure. I agree with the poster that stated the piano industry could not survive if it was volume based sales.

I find this to be quite the interesting discussion and can see why SMP is often the price referenced to as a basis to work down from (rather then up from the bottom)

If you all want to post the price you paid, or were quoted for a new piano, go right ahead. There is nothing saying you can't or shouldn't. As far as the practice being somewhat taboo on the piano forum, it may well be, for the reasons mentioned already.

Honestly, I think the price someone paid for their piano is rather personal. But if you want to reveal that information here on the forum, go for it.

However, you might want to ask yourself if it is going to be helpful and not hurtful to other members here, particularly the dealers?

I’m not so much pro piano dealer, but I am pro piano dealer member here... without the dealer members here, and the advertisers, Piano World might not be around. Or, if there were no dealer members, the forum would not be the same… it would be more or less one sided, so to speak.

We need the dealer members here... and, the ones who have been in business a long time, and have good reputations, know how to deal with their customers and pricing their pianos. If they didn't they would not be in business.

Rick

I agree with lilylady. At the risk of sounding like a lawyer, it can all depend on how "price" is defined. There are many aspects in addition simply to what is paid for the piano: shipping, tuning, prep, distance, reliability of dealer, etc.

There is one additional huge variable: the piano itself. Pianos are not identical. One can be offered a wonderful deal on a piano--but if one does not love the piano, the best deal in the universe is a bad one.

The analogy to cars tends to fall apart here, at least to new cars. One Ford Explorer with the particular list of options is the same as another Ford Explorer with the same options. That is simply not the case for pianos.

At the risk of sounding like a former new car sales man (wait I am that ... never mind).

We used to tell customers that all new cars are not the same and our prep was better. Now in the 1990's it used to be true, particularly for Japanese cars. You'd get two Honda's with the same spec and our car was better. Our team would literally take off all hoses and blow them clean amongst other things. The reason was some cars sat for months on docks waiting to be shipped and developed problems. Now with China producing so much goods and the U.S. buying it, the amount of shipping traffic means most cars go straight from the production line onto a boat with minimal delay, so the argument on prep for cars is balderdash.

I'm not sure for Pianos. Does a dealer really do a lot to prep a piano? Even if they did, I don't see the problem with reporting a price with the caveat (uncrated in my home) or (not preped).

Seems fairgame to me, why hide anything a poster WHO PAID for a piano wishes to share.. It IS the internet...

Would it be different if there weren't any dealers on this board?

If you want to share, then share. What's the big deal? I've been on fitness forum where I shared that I paid $700 for a used 1995 Concept 2 rowing machine. Or a running forum where I shared stated that I paid got a deal for two pairs of running shoes for less than $150. How's buying a piano any different? Are we elitists?

I'm all for it, if it will keep some of the dealers around here on their toes. It just might bring out their ugly side, though, unfortunately always close to the surface and on tap for those who disagree with them.

While at first glance the piano forum appears like one half of the posters are trying to sell something to the other half, piano dealers, while certainly vocal, represent a very small knot of opinion, it's simply that their focus is more "adjusted".

And, since the percentage of "active" piano forum dealers is likely less than one tenth of one percent of all the piano dealers and salesfolk in the US, luckily, in the real world, the piano buyer has a far wider choice of, er, personalites to choose from.


Mike

That sounds as if you've actually never experienced the actual piano shopping process.
It was a real eye opener for me.
When I started visiting different dealers since some of them made the stereotypical sleazy used car salesmen seem like saints.
Some of the outright lies and distortions that some of these salesmen would employ were outrageous but apparently many uneducated first-time buyers are gullible to their lies.
But there are also several very honest and upstanding dealers.
I ended up buying from one of the few that I found.