Have you ever tried to buy a piano online?
You’re probably thinking it’s easy. After all, a quick search brings up millions of results. You can find pianos everywhere.
Need a piano in a hurry? You’ll find them listed on Craigslist or eBay or your favorite local classified section. A quick call will have you the proud owner of a piano in no time.
You can buy a sweater or a book or shoes online. They are easy to see through photographs, easy to mail to your home, and easy to return if they aren’t as promised. Manufacturers know this, and so they have turned to the online world in droves.
But you won’t find that with an acoustic piano. Because acoustic piano manufacturers know that it isn’t the look of a piano that matters most.
Piano manufacturers have dealers to sell their pianos to the public because they understand it’s more than the looks that make a piano a great investment. They understand it takes a solid evaluation to determine if a piano is high quality and worth the money you pay for it.
Pianos are also one of the bulkiest pieces of furniture you’ll ever own. From the time they are manufactured, they are moved and wrangled and maneuvered into place. They are played and wrestled into tune again and again throughout the years. They aren’t something you and a buddy can move easily; a professional mover ensures it arrives at its final destination in good shape. That’s what makes pianos next to impossible to buy and ship easily through website sales, especially when it’s halfway around the world.
A piano isn’t something you can run to the hardware store when something goes wrong. You can’t pound a new piece of wood into place when you accidentally drop it. You can’t rig in a new piece of plastic when a key fails. The strings in a piano aren’t strings at all. If someone attempts to “fix” a piano without the technical knowledge to do it effectively, the piano won’t be worth playing at all.
So when you say “yes” to a piano online on Craigslist or eBay, what are you truly saying yes too?
