SAN MATEO PIANO

This is a fantastic store with wonderful staff. We really enjoyed working with Bozkurt and his colleagues. We LOVE our new Kawai K300– sounds really beautiful and was delivered to our home quickly and in perfect condition. We enjoyed the whole experience and found the pricing to be very fair.

San Mateo Piano is incredible. Bozkurt is one of the most thoughtful and professional owners I’ve had the chance to deal with. I purchased a Kawai keyboard from them, and while I was originally disappointed to find it was on backorder, the entire team was extremely responsive and helped me sort out the situation. I highly recommend you come talk to these guys when you purchase your next instrument. Loving my new piano and looking forward to doing more business with the SMP crew!

I love this piano store.
I went in one day looking for a very specific bench, very comfortable, while highly adjustable. The two seem mutually exclusive. I had been to a number of stores and even online I found it difficult to find. Bozkurt the owner showed me an amazing bench. But it wouldn’t work for the range of my piano students from little kids to tall adults. He went out of his way to pick one up from his warehouse while a student and I enjoyed the current offerings among his latest inventory of new pianos. Great action, expression and control on the uprights I played before he came back with the perfect bench and saved the day.
Bozkurt is courteous, knowledgeable and doesn’t pressure sell — he knows he’s got the quality pianos. Most piano retailers would have rolled their eyes at my request. Since then I’ve enjoyed keeping aware of his latest inventory. He’s where I’ve been sending all my students looking for a real piano to start taking deeper strides in their piano journeys.
Highly recommended.
Leon Rosen

I was shopping for a brand new vertical acoustical piano. I find San Mateo Piano is the best shop to buy Kawai. Bozkurt the owner is very willing to work with you to achieve a fantastic deal on what I like.
Great experience with Bozkurt and his associates.

Great experience with Bozkurt and his helper today. I hired them to pick up a friend’s piano and deliver it to my house today. He and his mover were punctual, professional, and careful. As the piano was very dusty, he even brought the piano down to his shop where he used his air compressor to clean it. I’ll definitely contact him when we are in need of more piano services and when my son eventually needs a grand piano! Thanks again for a pleasant and easy experience.

We love san mateo piano. They are very knowledgeable and love what they do. We bought a new digital piano from them and cannot be more pleased. After a few weeks the piano showing some electrical issue, they arranged the technician to come. However upon learning that it involves ordering parts that can take at least more than 4 weeks, bozkurt decided to just exchange the piano to a new one.
They have a top notch customer service and if we move to a bigger place and decide to get an acoustic piano we’d definition go to them. Check them out, you wont regret it.

We bought a piano from them a while back. Prior to visiting this place, we visited at least 5 or more places. The staff at this place were all great and knowledgable. They don’t try to sell you something is not right for you. They even connected us to a great turner who comes every year and does a great job! If you are looking to buy a piano, visit them.

Bozkurt the owner and manager really knows a lot about pianos. He was so helpful and knowledgable and gave me a fantastic deal on a used digital piano in my budget. I’m really happy with the piano. I checked around and this really is the best place to buy exactly what you need for your family. I’m really happy to find a digital piano that has wooden keys, looks just like a real upright piano and sounds amazing!

I have to agree with an earlier post. Having shopped for a piano for a couple of months I was tired of the used car dealer talk… Then a friend of mine told me he just bought a piano from Bozkurt. I went to the shop and Bozkurt was professional, knowledgeable and honest. You can see that he truly loves pianos. His price is fair and the Kawai’s are such great products. Definitely check it out. With no middle man you will get a great price and an amazing product.

I was shopping for a digital piano and tried a few piano stores. I’m very glad I made the trip to San Mateo Piano because there I found a really great piano. Only I wanted the slightly cheaper model, but that was no problem, Bozkurt was able to special order the exact model I wanted and it arrived in less than a week.
I got a great price and great service. Thanks!

Bozkurt is amazing and sincere, especially the way how he treats his customer is superb. We just purchased Kawai k500 from him, San Mateo Piano on November 26^th. Tim understands our need and makes our decision making process easy and simple. Due to the special circumstance and I am recovering from the chemo Bozkurt oversaw the piano delivery process and became part of mover team. The meticulous way they moved the old piano out of our house, inch by inch, tells me Bozkurt loves piano. I respect him. This is the business everyone should trust because Bozkurt takes care of his customers.

I had been in the market to purchase a piano over the last couple of months. I was primarily looking at Kawai and Yamaha pianos. As a somewhat new bay area resident, I had a very interesting buying experience which I thought I should share with everyone.
I visited all the stores in the area carrying these two brands. My experiences ranged from feeling like I am buying a used car to enjoying myself as if I were at the Apple store.
San Mateo Pianos was the last store to visited and that’s where I met Bozkurt. I was disgusted with the experience up to that point as it seemed like I have to go through the motions of negotiations with a sales person and the «Hidden Manager» next door just like the dreaded car buying experience.
When I started talking to Bozkurt, he was more interested in me becoming an educated buyer and purchasing the right Piano than getting a quick sale. This was a great experience and pressure was not even in the equation. I took my time going to the store trying out a few different pianos and ended up purchasing a K500 piano. He offered me a fair price and what a great sounding piano it is.
Thank you Bozkurt for your guidance. This piano spoke for itself but it was the way I was treated by him and his staff that I would recommend this store to anyone.
Great buying experience as buying a Piano should be.

Bozkurt was extemely helpful in the purchase of our piano. The delivery was a little late, but not a big deal. I feel like we got a reasonable price. Pleasure to do business with.

I needed to buy a piano for my 4 year old son and decided to check out San Mateo Piano based on the Unilocal reviews.
Small showroom but plenty of choices between grand, upright and digital. Originally, I was set on an upright piano due to the weight of the keys. Tim showed me the differences between upright and today’s digital pianos which have improved much since I first tried one.
Tim then showed me the range of digital pianos, and suggested a couple of models based on features and needs. The process was painless, and Tim was not at all pushy.
From the time I walked in to sitting down buying a piano was about 15 minutes. An easy and outstanding experience.

I went to the store to see the digital pianos 2 days ago to have an idea how the rental piano procedures work in Bay Area. Actually I was thinking that it would take couple of weeks to decide and rent one. Bozkurt explained all different types of digital pianos and how the system works very well. He answered all the questions such a nice way that when I stepped out of the door that unless I find super great I would rent from here.
Yesterday I decided not to look for more and rent directly from here the digital piano that I liked. I put my order around 5:30 pm online and just called San Mateo Piano to inform that I filled the form. Bozkurt offered to start the procedure right away on the phone and I was done by the rental in 10 minutes. What was more surprising than having all the process smooth and easy was that the piano was delivered on the same day around 9:30 pm to my home. It was incredibly fast and only complain that I could have can be the fact that I spend rest of the night playing the piano and could not sleep well from the excitement :))
I enthusiastically suggest this store if you want to rent a piano!

We had a great experience purchasing a digital piano at San Mateo Piano. Bozkurt is a very knowledgeable piano specialist and he was able to figure out what we needed. For us, we needed a 2^nd piano so that both of our children could practice at the same time. We purchased a Kawai CA-​95 hybrid digital piano, which has the «feel» of a real acoustic piano.
Originally we were thinking of purchasing a Yamaha digital piano because of the brand. But after we visited a Yamaha store in San Francisco and tried out the competing hybrid model, it was quite clear that the Kawai CA-​95 was a superior product.
Bozkurt personally delivered our piano this morning, and made sure everything was set up correctly. He also invited us to come into the shop for lessons on how to configure and use the digital piano.

I haven’t had a chance to purchase from San Mateo Piano, but I have talked with Bozkurt, the owner of San Mateo Piano, back when he worked at a competitor.
From my other review:
«He is extremely knowledgeable, not pushy at all, and best of all, he has a TRUE passion for music (piano AND guitar). There are many other stores where the staff can be rude, don’t know much about the pianos, or don’t even care for music, but [here] is the exact opposite.»
I think Bozkurt is on to a good business model where he runs the business lean and the sales staff is super knowledgeable. With his passion for music and authentic care for the customer, I’m not surprised he opened his own business.
As a classically trained pianist of 16 years, myself, THIS is the type of place from which you want to purchase.

We have been taking piano lessons at San Mateo Piano.
The teachers are great. They have very nice teaching rooms. There are lessons programs for adults and kids

My family bought a Kawai K-​500 (successor of K-​5) 51″ upright piano yesterday. Our interactions with Bozkurt, the owner, in the past 1 month couldn’t be more pleasant.
Buying a piano in the US is one of the areas that hassles are unavoidable because of a huge margin, occasional rebates, no-​transparency in MSRP etc.
1. This store is a rather small dealership, run directly by the owner. This means you can remove the extra commission for salesperson that in turn adds up to the price you pay. You can also bypass time-​consuming iterations between salesperson & manager/​owner during negotiation.
2. Many sales people try to sell the one with the highest margin — usually the most expensive one. Contrarily, Bozhurt kindly warned us that the more expensive piano you try the better sound you would experience. So he rather advised us to avoid over-​investment, keeping in mind the level of my son’s talent, enthusiasm, etc. He was clearly in our shoes, thinking in customer point of view instead of salesman point of view.
3. We liked the sound/​feel and initial price tag of the new Kawai K-​500 ebony. But we wanted a mahogany one since my family hates black. It needed a special order and we were concerned «what if the new one sounds/​feels different?» Bozhurt offered us a contingency term — if we don’t like the sound/​feel then he will nullify the sale and give a full refund of the down payment.
4. The final sale price was the level that would be nearly unbeatable by any other piano dealership. (I have a friend who does piano sales and I also did quite a bit of market research.) The time I spent for negotiation was less than 10 min.
5. Three weeks later, the new piano arrived from Japan. Unfortunately, the sound tone was «slightly» different from the ebony we tried. (I should say that the different is so subtle that most people including many piano technicians wouldn’t notice/​bother. It’s just a matter of personal preference in tone.) Bozhurt had a very skillful piano technician recondition the sound, matching the sound of the ebony! It was really an excellent work, costing him a substantial amount of expense but he did it for us!
6. Frequency status update calls for special order & delivery to home were small yet nice follow-​up.

I first heard about this store after a used piano listing on Craigslist, and decided to drop by after reading reviews on Unilocal.I’m so glad I did! When you drive up, the showroom doesn’t look particularly classy, which made me skeptical. But once you come in, you will be greeted warmly by Bozkurt, who is the real treasure of this place.
Bozkurt, the owner, is friendly, patient, and trustworthy. I ended up buying a shiny new baby grand that was delivered this week. As a previous reviewer described, the buying process was relaxed, informative, and very professional. Tellingly, Bozkurt was also equally friendly and easy to reach on every single communication we had between the purchase and delivery, even though I contacted him multiple times through phone and email.
I absolutely recommend this store, and Bozkurt, as resources for your piano needs.