Klarinet Archive - Posting 000149.txt from 1999/08

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Buffet E 11
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 22:22:23 -0400

At 10:19 PM 8/7/1999 EDT, Musikgator@-----.com wrote:
>In a message dated 7/17/99 3:22:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
>kissingerjn@-----.EDU writes:
>
><< Why did you not buy it locally? >>
>2 years ago when my younger son started band, I did a "rent to buy" band
>instrument from a local music store. The instrument price was $ 600 +. A
>couple months before the end of the school year I received paperwork that I
>owed over $ 800 + for his trumpet. I had planned originally to buy his
>instrument from them, but found this very irritating. I ordered an
>instrument by mail order (same model, same instrument) for less than $ 500.
>I also do not do business with them which is their loss because being a
music
>teacher I do not hesitate to tell prospective parents about them.
>
>At another local store, I brought in a sax to be looked over and checked to
>have it in playing condition. When I got home and tested it out, it still
>did not play. Looking closer I discovered a missing spring. When I brought
>it back and showed it to the man at the store he told me that I had not
told
>him that a spring was missing. I then showed him my ticket which said "put
>in playing condition". What decent repair man couldn't figure that out.
>
Just be careful not to paint ALL local stores with the same broad brush.
Some of them have rental programs that DO NOT work the way you describe.
And some even have repair techs who actually HAVE a clue!

And many fascinating customers come to them. Like the ones the other day
who returned with the rental tenor sax that they had just picked up from
being repaired. They brought it back INSISTING that we had not fixed it,
because a piece of masking tape the teacher had put on it marking the
missing screw had not been moved. Our techs had no idea why the tape was
there, but they left it alone, since the tape was on the far side of a post
that a key rod screwed INTO, and thus no screw belonged there. If that
"screw" had been missing, the whole upper stack would have fallen off!
The horn PLAYED just fine (I demonstrated it for them myself). The
customers apparently had not tried that!

Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
Essexville, MI 48732 http://members.wbs.net/homepages/z/o/o/zoot14.html
ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.

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