"The Call"

[Enzo]

Anyone in the amp repair biz shudders in fear when he picks up the phone to hear, "Yeah, hi, I picked up that combo amp you repaired a couple days ago, you know?" The adrenaline flows and you get that oh crap, now what feeling.

Well, I got one of those tonight and was all set to feel bad, but the guy just called to say it was all working great and he was happy.


Well, sometimes we get to win.

[TomCarlos]

Wins are good.... and I am sure you have many more from guys who didn't take the time to call you and say "thanks." So let me take another opportunity to say "thanks" for all the tips and help you have given me and others over the years. It is appreciated. Tom

[Rhodesplyr]

I got "the call" today regarding a Leslie amp I'd just repaired. The guy sounded very irritated and complained, "The high end screams, but there's no bass!" I'd only had the amp to fix, not the whole cabinet, but I'd thoroughly bench-tested it both into speakers and a dummy load, so I said, "Are you sure you have the woofer hooked up correctly?"

A few minutes later I got another call: "Sorry, my mistake."

[Bill Moore]

A few years back I worked on a rancher's diesel, and had replaced a turbo that was leaking oil. A few hours after he picked it up, he called, "what the h**l did you do to my truck"? I told him what was done, and he said "I haven't had this much power since I've owned it", "I never even had to downshift coming over the pass". I was glad to hear he was happy, and there wasn't a problem, so I looked closely at the turbo we had removed, and found most of the exhaust fins were worn to half their normal sixe.

[Mick Bailey]

If everyone you've helped here rang you up to thank you for the patience, understanding, knowledge and experience that you've dispensed..... well, you'd have to open your own call centre.

[52 Bill]

It's unfortunate that we have all become conditioned to expect negative calls and not positive ones. I know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it seems that now most people do nothing but squeak. I suppose that they are the ones that you remember.

I recently finished some neck work on a Fender bass for a new customer. Through the years the neck had been badly adjusted and it was in need of a complete work up. Two other shops had told him that he should just replace the neck.

When it was ready he couldn't pick it up in person so I couldn't talk with him about what was done. A couple of days later he called me and I was waiting to hear his complaints. To my surprise he had none. In fact he was calling to find out what he should do so that he wouldn't have any problems in the future.

Unfortunately positive feedback has become a rarity.

[Tone Meister]

Heck, I've just started pestering this forum with my own problems, and I absolutely appreciate the entirety of the collective wisdom here, and yours in particular since it is often accompanied by measured amounts of dry humor and the occasional reprimand.

Thanks to all of you folks.

[Mark Hammer]

I work on employee surveys for a living, and we always provide people the opportunity to provide comments at the end because, well, you just can't think of, nor fit in, EVERY question that's worth asking.

And after having read at least 40,000 comments, I can safely say that the average length of negative comments is substantially longer than that of positive ones. Positive comments will be like "Great survey. Thanks.", or "No real comments. Everything worked out well." Negative comments, on the other hand...have been known to go on and on and on. I have one taped to my office wall that goes for 3 full pages, at 10pt Arial narrow, 1/2" margins, and no paragraph breaks.

Small wonder, then, that we tend to remember all the negative comments, and so few of the positive ones. It also doesn't help that happy folks don't tell you they're happy nearly as often as unhappy folks tell you they're unhappy. We may well be doing a terrific job. But people expect a terrific job, so when they get it, they don't bother to make a big deal of it, and you never hear from them. And when they don't get it, they just unload until it starts to bore them.

[Mick Bailey]

Dale Carnegie writes quite a bit about gratitude in Chapter 14 of his book "How to stop worrying and start living".

He says amongst other things;

"If you saved a man's life, would you expect him to be grateful? You might - but Samuel Leibowitz, who was a famous criminal lawyer before he became a judge, saved seventy-eight men from going to the electric chair! How many of these men, do you suppose, stopped to thank Samuel Leibowitz, or ever took the trouble to send him a Christmas card? How many? Guess... That's right - none."

Whenever I think about being thanked for a good deed, I remember a few days spent in the Cornish village of Fowey. Over the estuary is another village, Polruan. You go over in the water taxi and just up the bank on the right was a tea shop - I don't know if it's still there. It was a bright Autumn day and we were having afternoon tea and scones. A bent-over old man came in and sat down. He was very confused. The lady running the tea shop asked him what he'd like, but he couldn't answer. She went away and bought him a pot of tea and something to eat. He struggled to get some money from a purse, but she closed her hand around his and said it was all right.

Within a few minutes, it clouded over and the sky opened up and heavy rain came down like grey steel rods. He got very worried and wanted to leave, but didn't have a coat. She went into the back of the shop and called "Don't worry, I'll find you something". She asked the people sitting in the shop if they'd look after things and she escorted him out into the rain with her arm around his shoulder. After quite a while she returned, hair and clothes soaked right through. The patrons in the shop were irritated because they hadn't had their orders or were waiting to pay. I asked if he was a regular, and she said he wasn't, but she'd seen him before "up the road".

She didn't get any thanks, quite the opposite. But ten years on and I still think about that act of kindness and hope she got her reward.

[oc disorder]

I think this call would be rather overwhelming particularly "out of the blue" !

"Merv says the biggest repair job of his career came in February 1972, when Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page was touring and famously shaved his beard mid-tour.

“He was playing in Sydney and the back pickup went,” of his “beautiful” 50s Les Paul, recalls Merv.

Page figured he’d have to send the guitar back to America but one of the local musicians suggested he “get it down to Cargill – he’ll fix that”.

“His roadie flew down from Sydney with it. I wound it while he was here ‘cause he was playing that night, he had to get back.”

A wire connecting the two coils of the humbucker had frayed and, as promised, Merv fixed it, sending the Les Paul off with the roadie to continue the tour.

“He [Page] rang me from New Zealand and said, ‘Man that guitar, unbelievable… it’s never sounded like that!’” "

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