We have a spinet piano that was in our family for generations. When one of the drop lifter elbows broke inside, we decided to schedule an appointment for one of Dunkley's piano technicians to come out for a tuning and replace the damaged part. I called Dunkley's to make the appointment and the gentleman on the other end was very rude and condescending. He said that the next available appointment would not be for another two months. TWO MONTHS. Whatever, so we would have to live with a broken key for a while... we went ahead with the appointment.
Two months later the technician arrived at our house as scheduled, having been given advance word about what the problem was with our piano. Instead of giving a detailed estimate for the repair and doing the servicing we requested, he gave us a condescending lecture about how he suspected the problem was with the drop lifter elbow but that we would be wasting money to replace parts made from old plastic. He said that we should either haul the piano straight to the dump or keep it as a decorative piece since the wood was in such good shape. When my wife asked him if he could just fix the one damaged key and forget about tuning it since it seemed there'd be no way to ask that much of him, he responded, "no I don't have the part and quite frankly I'm over 65 and I won't get down there anyway, especially with this old piano." What? So if you don't even want to get down there in the first place, knowing this was required ahead of time, then why even bother to come out and waste 20 minutes of our time?
He then proceeded to "do us a favor" and listed out several "nice" pianos back at the showroom floor for us to check out. That's not all though... he even pulled out his cellphone and called the sales manager to give him a heads-up that we were coming in, along with our names and contact information, just like a used car salesman would. The new pianos he listed at the showroom ranged in price from $4,000 to just under $10,000.
When he left we did some research and found a pack of 12 replacement drop lifter elbows online for under $6. My wife also found several YouTube videos that show just how simple it is to replace these yourself in a matter of minutes. Apparently this is a common problem with a simple solution that anyone can fix. My father-in-law had also replaced some other drop lifter elbows a few years ago and the piano worked good as new.
So essentially we called out a company that specializes in this kind of work only to experience a technician who was clearly not interested in a simple repair job but was more than happy to refer us to the showroom to sell us a new piano. Please, we weren't as dumb and gullible as this guy thought we were, and he more than likely gets a commission for sales references. The only positive that came out of this experience was that he waived the $70 service call fee, and only because he thought he could sell us a new piano.
These people are definitely not worth your time. Do some research and get a second opinion elsewhere. read more