My piano, the world traveler

Back in February, our digital piano stopped working. I turned it on one day, tried to play something, and got only silence. Then I noticed that the power light was on, but none of the other usual indicator lights. I called the electronics company that had fixed a minor problem with the piano once before, and they sent a man out to look at it.

"It's your main board," he told me after doing some investigating inside the piano.

"That doesn't sound good," I said.

"It's not cheap, either," he said cheerfully.

He went back to the office to look up the cost of a new circuit board, then called to inform me that there is no replacement part. The piano is 12 years old and the company has stopped making them. The only option for repairing the piano was to send my circuit board to the factory and have them rebuild it. This would take "2 to 4 weeks."

After weighing the cost for this procedure against the larger cost and hassle of finding a different piano, I gave the okay.

That was almost 8 weeks ago. I called a couple of times and was told that they hadn't heard back from the factory yet.

Today I called again, determined to be more aggressive. I even practiced my lines beforehand. I told the employee that since it was taking so much longer than I had been told, I was unsure whether I still wanted to have the work done. (Grrr! That's telling 'em!) He transferred me to another employee who, he said, might have more current information for me.

He did. "I just spoke with the people at the factory yesterday," he said. "Your board is in Japan."

He must have correctly interpreted my silence -- "????!!!!" -- because he went on to explain that for rebuilds of obsolete boards like this, they have to send projects to the main factory in Japan. Apparently it's no big deal. "Oh, yeah, we have several projects over there right now." When it's done, it gets shipped back to the factory in the U.S., then to the electronics company here in Utah, and then they'll bring it to my house and reinstall it. And then we'll all cross our fingers and hope it works. Because if it doesn't work, I'm not paying for it. I even told them so. (Grrr!)