How many guitars per customer?

[Keith Somerville]

Do you have a limit? I'd say half my customers bring 2 or more guitars with them. What are your thoughts on people bringing round a bunch of instruments at once?

[Cal Maier]

This question brings up two very important issues as far as repair shops go. 
1. Space……how much room do you have to store instruments on your premises?

2. Liability….do you have the insurance needed to cover all of your customers goods in case of a catastrophy?

Just a couple of thoughts on this issue. 

[Mike Kolb]

Interesting subject.  I also have folks who like to bring 2, 3 or 4 instruments at once.  Maybe one of the reasons is that I live/work fairly remotely, which makes for a "planned half day" for most customers who don't live close... so bringing more than one makes sense for them.  

There's a fair am't of room here, so storage isn't much of an issue, but it's bench space that's at a premium.  I let the customer know that it's generally "first come-first served" and they're in the cue unless it's something small that can be knocked-out while someone else's glue is setting-up, etc.  

Most folks are pretty understanding about the time factor, and I try to "overestimate" the needed time in front, so it's usually a pleasant surprise when repairs are done under that. 

It's the customers choice to pick up repaired instruments one-at-a-time, or wait until the group's ready.  If they're in no great hurry and have traveled some distance, they'll normally get them at one time.

Insurance?   Ummm, yeah...  I've got some homework and figuring to do there.

[Taffy Evans]

Hi, having been ripped off many years ago I do give some thought to this, and make judgments according to the customer and their location and my workload.

A couple of things come to mind. If the customer pays at the completion of all the jobs, that could be a long wait for payment of the first job. What if the combined cost of all work is out of the customer's reach, drama, this happened to me.

And, as in this photo, I drive 130km to pick up some guitar repairs and I get ten cello's from the same customer. That caused a storage issue, Haha.

Taff

[wood addict]

i have no limit on amount of guitars brought in to a point. there used to be a school district that would bring all 50-60 classical instruments in at a time. when that happened, we got really strict about "instruments left over 30 days"clause on our repair tags.i do have a few customers that will bring 4-5 instruments everytime, but most only bring one at a time.