I think the can of worms I'm opening should go nameless.  This Digest
is meant to give persons with an interest in mechanical music a way
to share information and ideas.  It's not a place to expose specific
villains.  That having been said, here goes.

I have a 93-year-old Steinway that has been in my family for the past
39 years.  It has an Aeolian "Themodist" player mechanism in it.  It
was my father's, and he was only its second owner.  In short, it's a
collector's item and darned near irreplaceable.  If you factor in my
family memories it _is_ irreplaceable.

But it was getting old.  It needed some attention.  I took pains to
seek out two technicians: one to fix the player mechanism, and one to
work on the piano itself.

Largely through the Digest, I found a technician who claimed to be
factory trained in the refurbishing of Steinways.  In late October
of last year, he quoted me prices on parts replacements that might be
done, and we agreed on the price.  The parts took a while to arrive,
and the work began the week before Christmas -- with an estimate of
about two weeks for completion.

The piano had to be placed on its back in the middle of my living room
for re-stringing.  There it stayed until mid-January.  I admit that
four days were lost while I was away for Christmas, but a pattern
quickly emerged.  He'd state a time to arrive, come a couple of hours
late, take a couple of hours for lunch, and miss some appointments
completely.  When he finished the re-stringing, he left large pieces
of plywood (that he'd used over the carpet and under the tilter) in
my living room hallway until he could borrow a truck to come back for
them.  And he took the action home to work on it.

In the weeks since, I have little more than the plywood in my living
room to remember him by.  The cell phone number he gave me has never
raised anything but Message W5-20, "subscriber is unavailable."  The
Maryland phone number I have for him gets me his answering machine,
but no response.  Sending an email has recently proved useless; because
his "mailbox is full," all messages are returned.  The only other number
I have for him is his mother's.  (That's the number that appeared in
the ad through which I originally contacted him.)

On January 25, around the time some lousy weather had presumably kept
him from honoring an appointment, I emailed him.  I said I was
concerned that he had keys to my condo, that I had told the front-gate
security people he was scheduled to come so many times that they surely
must have thought he was a member of the family, and that I couldn't
hang around the place forever hoping that he might show up.  I asked
him to set an appointment for returning and installing the action and
then keep that appointment.

He responded the next day apologizing for the missed appointment and
saying he hoped to finish up his work on the action by the next day,
deliver it, and pick up the plywood.  He even noted that he was sure
I was tired of looking at the wood by then.  (You bet.)

Next day more bad weather intervened.  Okay, I took that into stride.
The day following that he emailed that he really hadn't finished
working on the action.  On February 2 he wrote that he was currently
"completing his bench work."  (In other word the action had never been
ready for delivery in the first place.)  Perhaps he was annoyed that
I had resorted to contacting him through his mother's number.  At any
rate, he told me he would "let me know" when his work was completed.

On February 5 it was, "I had expected to finish my bench work today
but woke up with a fever and a sever sinusitis."  He promised another
update the next day.  On February 7, it was "I expect to be able to
deliver the action today or tomorrow.  Unfortunately, I lost my power
yesterday at about 2:45 p.m.  I will give you an update later today."
There was no update.  Fact is, I haven't heard from him since.

I really don't know what to do.  That piano is my most precious
material possession.  And I'm not sure whether it will ever play again.
The player technician is ready to do his work, but I'm stalling him
off.  There's no point in working on a piano without an action.

I'm venting, I realize.  I don't expect anybody to straighten this
out for me, and I know I was a babe in the woods.  But damn, when I'm
pretty sure that another action is "out there" for my instrument, and
when I can only hope that the re-stringing was done well in the first
place, this is a _hard way to learn._

Paul Murphy