Community College Used Piano Sale
Jazzapper
pianos. They claim the sale will be at substantial savings for names
like Steinway, Yamaha and Beldwin, supposedly at a fraction of the
manufacturer's original retail price.
Without any specific details, I'm just wondering, if I were to buy any
of these pianos either by private appointment or by auction, I wonder
what percent of its original value should I bid at - 50%? 75%? I'm just
looking for a general rule of thumb, and wondering if anyone has
experience bidding at these school piano sales.
Radu Focshaner
"Jazzapper" <franzen...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1123335560.5...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
The "college sale" scam was discussed many times on this NG.
Here are two posts of Larry Fletcher-Goldstein about "college sales" (you
can google the group for more "college sale" posts") (see also
http://tinyurl.com/9w8zf )
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The premise of college sales is a good one. Unfortunately, it has been
prostituted to the point it is in fact, nothing more than a scam.
The salesmen can be from the dealer, but usually most of them are "hit
men" - people who do nothing but move from one college sale to the other,
care nothing about you, the college, or the dealer. Once the sale is over
Sunday night, they pack up and leave, and they don't have to live with
anything they told you. They have their sales pitch down pat.
Here's how it works:
A local dealer of whatever brand you saw the most of at the sale gets the
school to let him loan them a few pianos. In return, the school agrees to
give them access to the alumni mailing list, and let them have a piano sale
every so often on the school grounds.
When they have the sale, they pull out the few pianos the school has been
using, back up a tractor trailer load of new pianos, run ads in the paper,
mail letters to the alumni telling them how they're helping the school,
etc. - all
with the old "you can buy one for pennies on the dollar" sales pitch.
The ads in the paper tell you the sale is one day only - Sunday. The truth
is, by Sunday the sale has pretty much wound down, because the ad also tells
you to call for an appointment. When you call, they tell you how swamped
with appointments they are, and that if you want a piano you'd better make
that appointment *right now*, for either Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, so
you can "get the best selection, and beat the mob on Sunday". They also make
sure you know that you can buy during your "appointment".
The appointment is the scam. They may only have 3 appointments all day, but
they'll schedule all 3 of them at the same time so that it looks as busy as
they can make it, then play cards the rest of the day. No matter how many
appointments they have, they group them together as much as possible so that
when you get there it looks like the place is hopping. This is to add
pressure, to get you caught up in the frenzy. (go back 2 hours after your
appointment - they'll all be sitting around eating pizza.....)
Anyway - the salesman's job is to make you think they don't have enough
pianos for all the appointments they have, so if you want one you'd better
jump, and the price "normally is _____ but this one is ______) If you
hesitate, they will pull out a price sheet again and show you the "hidden"
column of prices that
are only available to the faculty and staff and alumni.... but he's going to
be a sweetheart and let you have it for the same price they'll sell it to
the school.
In truth, you can still negotiate, because most of the pianos were sitting
in the dealer's showroom a couple of days earlier (after you leave the
college sale, go to the dealer's store - it's nearly empty), and they have
jacked the prices up so they can give you a "deal". In reality, the first
price they quote is usually higher than they would have quoted you 2 or 3
days earlier in the store, and will quote you in the store come next Monday
("Why sir, you're in luck! We just happen to have one left exactly like you
wanted that didn't sell at the school. We'll see if we can get the
manufacturer to backdate this sale and get you this fantastic deal!.....)
Yeah, right.
It is a program that on the surface sounds good, credible, beneficial to the
school, etc. but that is set up to stir up the gullible who are looking for
a "deal", get them all hyped up thinking they've got to jump or they'll miss
out,
and then jack you up and screw you blind.
If you want a piano, take your time, shop, compare. When you finally choose
the one you want, go sit down with your checkbook in hand, let them know
you're serious, and let them know you expect to get the best price they can
give you. Let them know you've done your homework and you *know* what that
price is
pretty close, and that if they play the first game with you, you will get up
and leave. And be prepared to do it. I assure you, you will get a better
deal any day of the year doing it that way than you'll *ever* get by
subjecting
yourself to the high pressure circus that is a college sale.
Larry
Doing the work of 3 men - Larry, Curly, & Moe
----------------------------------------------------
I sold Kawai for years. I was selling them when the college sales first
started. It looked like a promising move, and could have been had it not
been for sheer greed.
Kawai had a glut of inventory at the time. Sales were down, the warehouses
were full, and the factory was turning out more every day. Meanwhile, a
dealer in California loaned a few pianos to the local symphony for a big
event they were having, asking in return for permission to have an onsite
sale of the pianos afterward. This dealer came up with the entire format -
the appointment only angle, the "preview showing" days prior to the "one day
only sale" (the real sale is the three days before Sunday's "one day
sale") - the whole thing. It was a phenomenal success. I know the dealer,
and have even worked a couple of sales with him.
Since he was a Kawai dealer, and they sold a lot of Kawai pianos at the
sale, the dealer was asked if he
objected to them copying the format and trying to duplicate it in other
markets. Of course, he didn't mind at all. The idea to approach colleges
came next. It was a good way to get product out of the warehouses. The
finance companies that floorplan inventory were writing checks for the
pianos to Kawai, and the sales were a huge success.
Then, greed kicked in. Dealers were being pushed to line up more colleges.
Some of us tried to tell them that they were going to kill the goose that
was laying the golden egg, but we were scoffed at and ignored. It got so out
of hand that some of them were having sales every few weeks. Some got to the
point that if
they didn't have college sales, they would be out of business, because their
floor traffic was way off (they were creaming the market with the college
sales).
The dealers were becoming both dependent on college sales to spark traffic,
and getting even more greedy. It has now ended up that there have been so
many college sales that consumers have caught on to it. Even those who
didn't quite understand the "gimmick" were smart enough to think "oh well,
if I miss this one I'll just go to the next one in a few weeks."
Now, because of the greed and overdoing what could have been a sustainable,
long term marketing tack, college sales are old news. Consumers all across
the country are ignoring them in droves. The expense of staging these sales
is enormous. Many sales now barely break even - more than a few lose money.
Now, understanding that today there are thousands of pianos sitting in
colleges, thousands more that didn't sell sitting in dealers' showrooms that
must be sold as demo units, then add to that the fact that college sales
aren't
producing like they did and dealers are obligated to buy the units that
don't sell. I'd say that is not a pretty spot to be sitting in.
All you have to do is pay attention to how many people get on this NG asking
about a piano they saw in at a dealer that had "been used less than a year
but was in like new condition". I believe the person who started this thread
is one of them in fact. And if I'm not mistaken, your own piano was bought
in a similar fashion.
Some dealers got so addicted to the "sales pitch" that every piano they
sell, if they can't close the deal they take them to another piano just like
the one the customer is looking at and offer them a lowball price on it
because it was "used less than a year but is like new", whether or not the
piano had ever seen a college (in other words - lie). So the demise of the
college sale format has left several things in its wake: dealers who have
forgotten how to sell pianos without the "college sales pitch", dealers with
stores full of "demo" units that haven't sold but they were forced to buy
(meaning they have to sell through that inventory before they reorder) and
colleges around the country with thousands of pianos in them that will have
to be bought be the dealers if they don't sell at the college sales. And
college sales are for the most part becoming unproductive. And many colleges
are becoming uncomfortable with being dependent on the program, and are
getting tired of having to break in brand new pianos all the time. Many of
them are looking for a way to break free from the loan program.
If you want to see just how saturated the country has been with these sales,
open your browser and type in "college sale" and just take a look at all
the sites that pop up for a college sale. Bear in mind that only a tiny
percent of them bother to put it on the web, since that really doesn't do
much good. Pay attention to how similar the format of the sales are from one
end of the country to the other - then you will see they must have a
playbook they are following. They do, and I have a copy of the book.
With that much inventory sitting in colleges, on dealers' sales floors, and
the factory building more every day, my opinion would be that this is not a
pretty situation to be in. What may be around 5,000 today could be 8,000
next year.