Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum To bid.....or not to bid

The job:

Tune 105 pianos, twice a year, in 30 locations spread over an area of several hundred square miles. Tune at A=440, minor voicing, check action, adjust pedals and dampers, tighten bench legs, tighten/replace hardware and bumpers as needed, blow out dust.

The Bid:

Five invited to bid, three bid, one bid accepted.

The winning bidder expects to:

Tune all 105 pianos in a week, by tuning 16 pianos a day, so he/she makes the daily goal of $XXX gross income. The plan is to spend 25 minutes on each piano and work 18 hours per day.

I'm not kidding.

Hahahaha. No. Four is, like, my max. 16? I'd die of boredom before I ever got a physical injury from doing that job.

So the winner is the loser.

The client is the loser.

Yikes! Taking a job like that sounds like a really good way to get old quick.

School district?

16 pianos tuned per day?

25 minutes at each piano?

No way! What kind of tuning can be achieved in 25 minutes? And the tuner ís supposed to do minor voicing, check action, adjust pedals, tighten bench legs, etc.? Twice a year?

I think it is a typo. 16 pianos X 25 minutes = less then 7 hours.
It should be 55 minutes per piano, which is closer to the ball park.

You forgot to account for the distance between pianos.

Tighten bench legs? I have done this on 4 here at the school. You tighten once, use torquelock and they never budge again.

yeah, we had a similar situation with a base station roll out a couple of years ago (different numbers but same situation). The supplier managed to do this burning out most of the engineers. The involved engineers all quit due to burnout syndrome..

And there you have how it can be done. Get a moving van and a driver. Pick up a piano and tune it on the way to the next location. Drop off the tuned piano and pick up the next one. Rinse and repeat, until you are back where you started from!

I would not be surprised to see this institution trade all the pianos for digital ones within five years. The conclusion they will draw from "service" provided by this contract is that pianos do not stay in tune and are unreliable.

The year has 365 days. Half a year has is about 183 days. There are 105 pianos. On a well made schedule you have enough time available with only one piano tuned each day!

Why do they want all the pianos to be tuned the same week?

Hang on folks. The bid calls for servicing X number of pianos X times a year in X number of locations spread over X number of miles. It seems it is only the winning bidder that has decided to do them all in one week, not the ones offering the bid!

I see. It's crazy. And I guess the owners won't be happy with the results.

Unless the bidder is a company with 4 tuners available which will tune 4/5 pianos per day each...

Ed, the newer buildings are going to 2 acoustics, 2 digitals. Most of these older buildings have 4 acoustic. Total travel miles is about 700. This is the end result when money trumps quality of the job. Bidding for piano work is usually not good for the piano, or the technician.

Years ago I had a school district contact me wanting a bid on tuning and repairing the pianos. I ignored them for several years, then finally sent them a letter with a bid based on the actual cost of things that go wrong with school pianos, custodians who won't open doors, schedules that have pep rallies, or other noisy events next to the piano, locked schools, and a whole host of other annoyances. I set a price four times the going rate. 'Never heard from them again, but I did hear a few of the horror stories from techs who "won" the bids.

Sometimes winning a bid is actually losing. The winner is usually the client, in terms of cost savings. In terms of quality of service, no one wins.

When you have to "tune" 16 pianos per day to make a living wage.....something is not right.

This is a large, nationwide church and these are Christmas tunings that should be done between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The bid winner has other contracts similar to this one in other states as well, thus the one week rush. Spring would be more leisurely, I would think.

I considered doing the same type of thing a few years ago, tuning 9 or 10 a day, but dropped the idea after doing the numbers. Back then, I looked at 1 hour per piano, not 25 minutes, though!