piano fiasco

For Christmas Eric's parents wanted to get the boys a keyboard or a piano. We got an incredible deal on a piano that was worth at least $1500 and we paid $200. It was from a company that stores pianos and sells the ones they repo. We had found them on craigslist and when we went to look at them they were all really in poor condition except one. All of the others ones were for sale for $400-500. The one in the best condition was only $200. We kept asking why it was so cheap and they said they didn't know. We had the guy that works on the pianos come see if there was any damage inside and he said it looked like it had been recently replaced on the inside. He said that if we don't buy it he is going to buy it and resell it. So the one thing that was keeping us from buying it was the fact that it was a player piano, which makes it extremely heavy. We finally decided that it was too nice of a piano to pass up. We paid an extra $100 to have it delivered. This was before Christmas. It is a beautiful piano!


Now we have owned it for about a month and a half and we get a phone call saying that there has been a mix up with our piano. They sold us someone's piano that was not for sale. They wanted to trade us one of their other pianos and give us our money back. It sounds great, except that this was our boys christmas present from their grandparents and they LOVE this piano. They all play the player part and Grant and Eli have both learned to play and read music on it. It already has sentimental value to us. Grant plays up to 4 hours a day. He is very serious about playing it. We looked at the piano they had to offer us and it was horrible.

The bottom line is, we wouldn't have bought any of those other pianos from them. There were alot better pianos on craigslist for cheaper. We didn't just want ANY piano. We wanted a good piano that was going to last a few years. We technically "own" the piano and we could sell it. We have been in alot of prayer over this because we want to do the christian thing/the right thing. Today they called and told us that they had a couple of more pianos for us to look at. They were both very nice. They gave us the one we chose plus they are giving us our money back. We are very pleased with this. The boys are sad, but we feel like this is the right thing to do. The first owners of the piano don't even know about the situation and that is frustrating to me. I think they should have been told what happened with their piano. That is not for me to worry about anymore. Here is a picture of what it looks like but it is not a wurlitzer.