My experience started a couple months ago when I hired another Syracuse area piano technician to…read morerepair and tune my piano. At first, I was annoyed that he was around 45 minutes late, but I thought he had done a good job, until the repair which cost almost $700 failed within a week, and the piano was out of tune within a few days with some keys being off almost a whole note. The tuning was almost another $100, not even included in the repair cost.
This led me to searching for someone else to give me an estimate and to re-tune the piano. After some searching, I found out about Kris, the owner of Piano Service Unlimited. Obviously at this point I was a bit weary of anyone claiming they could fix it and tune it properly. I set up an appointment with him anyways, hoping to have a better experience. To say the least, he did not let me down.
He arrived about 10 minutes before the scheduled appointment, dressed appropriately in a company shirt and with his company logo professionally displayed on his car, compared to the t-shirt the other guy showed up in. He was very friendly, and seemed to love to talk to me about the piano and I could tell immediately how passionate he was about his work. A good sign in my eyes.
I proceeded to tell him what was wrong, and showed him how horribly it was repaired and how out of tune it was, even he was shocked by how horrible a job was done, but wasn't surprised, due to his previous experience with pianos he has re-repaired shortly after other technicians in the area had "fixed them". After a few minutes, he pinpointed what was wrong, which was something else entirely, the previous "fix" was unneeded and actually caused more damage. He described it, and said it was basically like a slightly wet bandage, it might stick for a little while, but will fall off quickly which gave me a good laugh.
He gave me an estimate around $300-325, including the tuning which I believe was around $65 of the cost, 1/3 less than the first technician's price. After letting him work for a little while, I could tell he already had everything fixed since he had begun tuning the piano. After about 30-40 minutes, he was done, and he had done a very thorough job, going through all the notes multiple times. After I came back in, he showed me the work he had done, everything looked to be back to brand new, I couldn't tell anything was ever wrong, and all traces of the previous "fix" by the other technician were gone. On top of that, he gave me a further discount because he felt bad that I had gotten ripped off the first time.
It's now about 6 weeks later and everything is still working perfectly. The piano is still perfectly in tune and sounds absolutely amazing, better than when it was first delivered and tuned by the store I bought it from. I am pleasantly surprised to find an excellent piano technician/tuner that was professional, and had fair, affordable prices. I simply can't believe that his prices are as low as they are compared with others in the area, considering the excellent service he provided compared to the other technician. At first I was worried it was a too good to be true situation, but clearly that is not the case.
It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, I highly recommend Kris from Piano Service Unlimited! He was punctual, professional, polite, great to talk to, and extremely gracious by reducing the cost, due to the screw ups of a competitor and genuinely feeling bad I had gotten ripped off. I have definitely found the technician I will be using from now on, and I will definitely be using him every 6 months to have the piano tuned, per his recommendation as well as the manufacturers. Look no further than Kris, he is an excellent technician and a wonderful person.
P.S. Sorry for the length, but I felt it was all relevant information. I will be gracious and not mention who the other technician was, All that matters is how positive this experience was, not how negative the other was, however it was helpful information to compare them.
