Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum New Yamaha U3 pricing for West Coast ... HELP!

I agree.

Perhaps the piano industry should adopt Macy's model. Have a sale every week from Wed-Sunday where half the store is marked down 25-50% off. That's your real price. Probably at the same rate of the old lady who walks in and thinks your prices are actually your prices, you'll get someone that comes in on a Mon-Tues who needs a piano NOW and make them pay the sticker price.

Or you could go with the grocery club card model. There's always some who are too lazy or worried about their personal info, don't want to sign-up, and don't mind paying double the real price.

I wonder how much of these stores' profits come from these types of shoppers.

It was commentary, not personal criticism. I believe I have solutions that would significantly improve if not solve most of the issues, though getting industry wide acceptance is perhaps the bigger problem. It's just too small of an industry to properly force the issues, IMO.

Thanks. I will take a look when I visit the dealer this week.

Sam, I didn't think you were being critical of the poster at all. You've always come across as fair-minded here.

I'm truly interested in what your solutions are. Maybe in another thread, if you feel so inclined.

When you walk into a Steinway dealership, you know what the price is. Why shouldn't it be the same at a Yamaha dealer?

I think for starters, dealers should print their prices on the web and quote over the phone. A Yamaha dealer said Yamaha prohibits them from doing that but I'm not completely convinced. I think this would encourage them to print their real prices since consumers would know early on what the prices actually are and can decide if they even want to visit that shop or not. So if they print inflated prices like many of them do now, they'll lose the foot traffic. I suppose they could have a "University Sale" every weekend.

Thanks Retsacnal and saw your Baldwin M purchase, which is really nice. Congrats on the excellent find.

I looked at "gray market" and the discount compared to buying new + warranty is not that great. Maybe I will consider if/when my kids graduate to a grand piano and I have to time to search.

I know this is an old thread. One thing I find lacking on the web is the price people paid for new pianos. This thread is one of the few that includes actual pricing for Yamaha U3. I know pricing can be affected by many factors. I just want to add 1 additional data point for reference.

Model: Yamaha U3
Price paid: $7000 + tax. Delivery included; free tuning not included; $70 discounted 1st tuning.
Location: Bay Area (San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose), California.
Date: August 2014.
University sale; piano straight out of box from warehouse.

Below are the details, if anyone is interested.

My wife is the piano player, but she doesn't know anything about buying pianos. The piano she used was purchased by her parents when she was 3 years old. I know nothing about pianos, so I had a lot to learn. I read Larry Fine's The Piano Book. Another book I found very informative is the Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying a Piano. I normally don't find those Idiot books useful. But in this case, I'm definitely a newbie to piano.

My wife had Yamaha U3H in Japan that she played thru college. After looking at various brands, both new and used, she decided that she wants that same model, Yamaha U3. That made the buying decision/process a lot easier. We were considering 3 possible options.

(1) Ship my wife's old U3H from Japan to USA. This was quickly ruled out. It was not cost effective to ship vs buying used. And her old piano has sat idle for past 15 years, so there might be unknown issues.

(2) Buy a brand new U3 from Yamaha dealer. My wife really wants new unit. So we want to get new piano if the price is right. The MSRP is $13,000. Listed sale price we have seen is around $9,000 to $9,500. I have couple acquaintances who purchased Yamaha 3 to 8 years ago: $7,300 (group sale where 10-15 buyers got together) to $8,000 (individual sale). From this thread, $7,700 was possible in 2013. This gave us some reference. We hoped that we can get new U3 for <$8000.

(3) Buy used. Rebuilt/refurbished unit from Japan, thru private dealers: U3H (1979) $3,800 and U3A (1985) $4,500. The price is attractive. But the concern is warranty. These dealers work out of their homes/garage. Although they provide 5-year warranty, it is only good as long as they are in business and willing to follow thru on warranty issues. We also looked at used units in piano stores; warranty should be more trustworthy; but asking prices are higher $5000-$6000; and negotiation is required and not exactly sure what is bottom price.

We are not in a hurry, so we were thinking about buying piano sometime in the next year. Then I got a letter about university sale at local Yamaha store. I read about university piano sale being high pressure, time limited, marketing gimmick. I want to check it out and figure out what price is possible. I figured buying piano will be like buying car before the internet, so need several rounds of negotiating and possible several visits to get to bottom pricing. If we don't get a good price on new piano, we plan to buy refurbished unit. We really didn't expect to come home with a piano.

This is not my 1st visit to Yamaha store, so I already heard their pitch about gray market pianos from Japan. But this time, there is something new: university sale. The salesman provided information on university sale that was very confusing:
- He said universities today are hurting for money, so they will soon stop taking loaners from Yamaha. I think he is trying to say that this might be last university piano sale, and there will be no more in the future. But he didn't complete his pitch. This general statement is just mind boggling. If school has no money to buy pianos, then they will be more likely (not less likely) to take loaners.
- He said loaners are considered new pianos. They were used by university on consignment; dealer takes the units back after 1 year and sell them as new, with Yamaha warranty. But then he assured me we will get brand new unit from dealer's warehouse, because the loaners were all sold during 1st hour on 1st day of the sale.

Then the next 2 statement came after we closed the deal:
- I joked that loaners prices should be even better than what we paid, so we should have lined up overnight so we are 1st in line on the 1st day of sale. He said no, loaner prices are actually higher. Part of loaner sales proceeds goes to the university, so store makes less on loaners. Whereas on new units, they have more room to negotiate.
- On the delivery, even though we bought a new model that comes from the dealer warehouse, the unit will be delivered by the university.

I'm more confused about university piano sale than ever.

Moving on to the price. Listed sale price was $9,300. With mid-$7,000 price in mind, I started negotiation at $7,000. Salesman said the dealer's cost is $8,000, so $7,000 is extremely unlikely. But he is on my side and he will go fight with his manager for me. Again, I figured this will be like buying a used car, so I was getting ready to negotiate couple rounds. Salesman left for 3 minutes. To my surprise, he came back and said yes, they can do $7,000 + tax; shipping included. My wife and I discussed briefly about negotiating for 1 or 2 free tuning. But we were stilled shocked at the $7000 price, so my wife just wanted to close the deal quickly. It was a lot easier than buying a car.

One downside is that unit was straight out of the box from warehouse, so no dealer prep.

See! I just said the other day that U3's could probably be had for $7-8K and everyone called foul.

Which dealer did you get it from? Music Exchange, Piedmont Piano?

I was also first drawn into Piedmont Piano through their "University Sale." I'm also confused what exactly it is - but I'm leaning towards it being just a marketing thing. Either way, I didn't hold it against them. At least they're not marketing Chinese pianos as European like certain others in the area.

Anyway, that's a pretty good score since U1's sell for about $6K.

But since it hasn't been prepped or ever tuned by the dealer - I think it takes at least 4 tunings for the piano to even start to stabilize and dealers often do at least one, maybe two. Expect the first tunings to be within 2-3 months of each other at $140/ea. And I would get a tech to setup the action a bit, maybe cost you $200-$300. Even with all that - still a great deal. Congrats.

It was Yamaha dealer in San Jose.

hey Marty!

ok, back to post.........sorry