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Which is getting played: the organ or the owner?

The sales strategy at Fletcher Music Centers is to get organs into the homes of senior citizens . . . and then get them to buy upgrades. Fletcher says it's a lifestyle; critics say it's manipulative.

Anna Bauer-Burton sits in her living room armchair, gripping the oxygen tube that runs across her lap to her nose. She loops it round and round her fingers as Don't Cry For Me Argentina spills out of an imposing, wood veneered organ, playing by itself.

The organ cost $53,000. Her husband, Robert Burton, 74, has an even pricier model, which sits at the other end of the room.

The Burtons are not expert organ players - far from it.

"It would take too many years," says Mrs. Bauer-Burton, 73. "We don't have that many left."

The Spring Hill couple bought their first organ from Fletcher Music Centers two years ago. Soon, they had two. Within 18 months, they had traded up about a half-dozen times on each one. The Burtons refinanced their home to help pay for it all.

From the beginning, the rapid series of organ purchases was the plan. Not theirs - Fletcher Music's.

Fletcher's sales strategy targets senior citizens. It lures them to its stores with lessons, concerts and potluck dinners. It entices them with the possibility of new friendships and enriched social lives.

First-timers are encouraged to buy the least expensive models. Within days or weeks, Fletcher salespeople encourage the new buyers to trade for better ones.

Mrs. Bauer-Burton isn't sure how much money she has spent trading up for the organs. She guesses $300,000. Her husband says $200,000.

Both estimates, it seems, are way off. Fletcher records indicate they have spent $127,965. That's more than their home is worth.

They have spent so much of their money on the organs they can't afford an electric scooter Mrs. Bauer-Burton needs to get around.

Still, Mr. Burton says he and his wife accept responsibility for their purchases. And anyway, they treasure the music and friendship at Fletcher.

The couple used to travel. Then she fractured her hip and had to have both knees replaced, so they took up the organ . Now she is learning to play a favorite hymn , Fairest Lord Jesus , though she can't yet keep up with the organ's computerized background rhythm.

"They're really a good mob," Mr. Burton says of Fletcher's sales staff. "We like them."

Fletcher is the nation's largest home organ dealer. The Clearwater company has 30 stores in Florida, Arizona and Nevada. Founded in 1975, it had $27-million in sales last year.

The organs, made by Lowrey Organ Co. of Illinois, are nothing like those of yesteryear. They are heavily computerized and specifically designed to be easy for the elderly to play. They allow people to learn a few simple tunes - with rhythms, beats and accompanying instruments to back them up - and come with preprogrammed music from the '30s, '40s and '50s, lowered music stands easily seen through the bottom halves of bifocals and oversized buttons for arthritic fingers.

There is no natural market for home organs. So Fletcher creates one by offering a fun social environment where elderly people can learn to play.

"After all," company founder Bob Fletcher told the Music Trades magazine in 1995, "who wants to buy an organ before they get involved with us?"

By all accounts, organ dealers around the country employ the same sales strategy.

Fletcher's president, John Riley, says he understands why people might look skeptically at it. "Because of the uniqueness of our industry," he says, "the appearance of impropriety is great."

But that appearance, he says, is false.

Multiple sales do not victimize elderly customers, Riley says. Rather, they protect them.

"We encourage our customers to trade in smaller increments so that they can tell us where their level of comfort is," he says.

Typically, he says, first-time customers don't really know what they want. They buy a bottom-of-the-line model and start to learn to work the features, such as the push-button menus of instrument sounds.

About 40 percent of these new buyers begin trading up as their abilities and appreciation of the organs' capabilities grow, Riley says.

He says customers get full credit for organs traded within 90 days of purchase, meaning those who trade up quickly pay the same as if they had bought higher-priced models at the outset.

But the policy only covers regularly priced organs. Many customers buy their organs at a discount.

Riley said that to preserve his customers' confidentiality, he would not allow the St. Petersburg Times to review sales records to see how the trade-in policy most often plays out.

The multiple high-end sales to elderly people have attracted scrutiny.

In 1998, two dozen Fletcher customers filed a lawsuit in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court contending that the company's salespeople developed in customers a false sense of friendship and reliance. Then, the suit said, at lessons and socials, customers were encouraged to trade up to more expensive organs. The suit ended in a settlement that both sides agreed not to disclose.

In 2000, Arizona's attorney general investigated Fletcher's sales strategies . Fletcher admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed to put its sales procedures in writing, ensuring that customers would know they had three days to cancel their purchases. The company also refunded about $90,000 to two customers.

Two months ago, relatives of a 79-year-old New Port Richey widow realized that within 18 months, she had bought 11 organs from Fletcher. According to sheriff's reports, the woman's family said they told the Fletcher sales manager, Scott Heyder, to stop selling to her because she suffers from Alzheimer's. Heyder was arrested and charged with exploitation of the elderly.

Riley suspended Heyder and agreed to refund all of the woman's money while letting her keep the organ. He declined to comment much further until the legal issues are resolved, but vigorously defended his company.

"You don't stay in business 30 years by mistreating people," he said.

Riley said that to his staff and to other customers, the woman appeared very capable of handling her own affairs . At the Times' request, he turned over copies of the notes his employees took on seven phone calls made to her. (Fletcher's home office routinely follows up sales with a call to the customer, Riley said.)

Notes from a Jan. 24 call describe the woman as getting ready to do her own income taxes.

"My conversation with . . . was most pleasant - we have talked before," the caller from Fletcher wrote. "At the time of my call (the customer) said she was going through all her receipts, etc., getting prepared for taxes. She had hoped to get to the store today, but said she started thinking about this stuff and thought she should do that first."

Heyder, according to Riley, has said that the woman's family never told him she has Alzheimer's.

After Heyder's arrest, state Attorney General Charlie Crist launched another investigation of Fletcher . The inquiry was closed last week after no pattern of companywide deception or unfair trade was found.

To manage the company's image, Fletcher contracts an outside public relations man, John Heagney.

Heagney also set up a potluck dinner and concert at the Largo Mall store specifically for a reporter to attend.

On a Tuesday afternoon in June, about 60 seniors gathered in rows of folding chairs in the store. Albert Manero, a Fletcher vice president, sat up front in a gray suit at a $72,995 organ.

Manero played Embraceable You and Dueling Banjos. Then he played a Latin song with mariachi trumpets and flamenco guitar. Feet tapped. White-haired heads bobbed.

Soon, Fletcher vice president Hank Harrison joined Manero for a duet.

"Not just any duet," he said, "but the more difficult, two-person duet."

That drew laughs.

The pair played several songs to their enthusiastic audience.

"We've got some food out there," Harrison said afterward. "It's all in alphabetical order."

More laughter.

Before the seniors rose from their chairs, Harrison made a couple of announcements, then mentioned the store had plenty of organs in stock. He invited everybody to check them out.

That was the extent of his sales pitch.

Bill and Doris Ernst of Seminole sat eating deviled eggs and baked beans from foam plates. They, like the Burtons, are among the rare couples who each have an organ, so they can play duets.

"For so many people, they're alone," said Mrs. Ernst, 72. "They look forward so much to coming."

Mr. Ernst, 74, said he and his wife have never felt pressure from Fletcher salesmen.

"We didn't buy a boat. We didn't buy a cabin up in North Carolina. We didn't buy an expensive car. We did buy an expensive organ, and we couldn't be happier."

Joseph Fiordaliso could be happier. He has a $40,000 organ in the living room of his $21,000 mobile home in Largo.

"I was just a sucker," he says.

In less than two years, the 67-year-old Fiordaliso traded up four times from an $800 model. He bought his current organ with help from a 15.9 percent bank loan arranged by Fletcher.

"What they do is, they get you involved, and they establish a sort of camaraderie," he says. "They have these socials and get-togethers, and they get real friendly."Then, he says, come the high-pressure tactics. Again and again, Fiordaliso said, salespeople gave him the same pitch: You really seem like you're interested and you want to go further. You could do a lot better with this other organ.

Fiordaliso blames himself for his purchases, not Fletcher. "I'm not senile. . . . If I was stupid enough to buy it, then they should sell it to me."

Still, he says, "I really think they prey on the older people."

The issues raised by Fletcher's sales strategies are not black and white, says Victor Molinari, a professor in the Department of Aging and Mental Health at the University of South Florida.

"Certainly older adults are much more likely to have dementia than younger people," he says. But, "most older adults don't have dementia."

The issue of selling a social life reminds him of the dance studio cases that gained notoriety in the 1990s. Charming young dance instructors would teach a few steps to elderly widows, then sell them grossly overpriced travel packages to social events.

Lonely seniors on gambling cruises also can get in trouble, Molinari says, gambling away money they need for necessities.

But it is an age bias, he says, to simply assume that seniors - because of the possibility of dementia - aren't making good spending decisions.

"If they start taking dancing lessons or they go on cruises or are enjoying themselves playing music or something that they've never done before," he says, "well, more power to them."

Steve Thompson can be reached at sthompson@sptimes.com or 727 869-6245.