Money, not surprisingly, became a source of conflict between dressmakers and customers. The blame was clearly two-sided. The Tirocchis ran a custom business where the price for each garment was set individually, and that price reflected not just the Tirocchis' costs but also negotiations between dressmaker and client and the dressmakers' estimation of what the market would bear. A given style of dress would cost less if the customer chose a cheaper fabric, but cost more with every additional bit of work she requested. In the larger commercial culture, fixed prices were the rule, but in the Tirocchi workshop the older practice of mutual agreement on price still prevailed. Customers pushed the sisters to give them firm prices, but then often asked for extras, expecting that the price would remain the same. What might begin as an agreeable discussion of price could end in acrimony. After a visit to 514 Broadway in May 1922, Charlotte Robinson Luther wrote Anna that she would not be able to afford the two dresses they had talked about, saying, "I don't b[l]ame you for going up on your price but I can not this year pay as much." She also took the trouble to list the clothes she had had from the sisters and their prices. When her bill arrived in early August, however, things turned sour. There had been many problems with the garments, alterations were required, and the bill was much higher than Luther had anticipated. She placed the blame squarely on Anna: "The waist of the crepe dress was always a failure so much so that I never wore it but a few times and when I did my friends remarked they wonder if I knew how badly it looked on me that I feel that you were only rectifying your own mistakes." Fortunately, Luther and Tirocchi had a long history of good relations that survived this dispute. Her letter closed: "If I am not doing the correct thing let me know and I wont [sic] bother you again." After Charlotte Luther's death, Anna Tirocchi wrote to Luther's executor that she would "miss her very much, not only for the business part, but for her personality" and remembered her as someone who "always paid her bills very very promptly."(23)

Relations with some other clients reflected more intense conflict. A Newport customer apparently had convinced the Tirocchi sisters to give her preferential prices, which remained a secret between them. The customer characterized the agreement as one between businesswomen and negotiated her prices relentlessly, but she showed a casual attitude toward her side of the bargain when she once "forgot" to give Anna a check while at the shop and on another occasion sent a check "which I though[t] I put in the letter I wrote you a few days ago." When she received a bill, she paid only what she had expected the prices to be, offered to negotiate about the charges above that level, and treated Anna to a long recital of her logistic and financial difficulties, clearly perceiving herself as different from the ordinary Tirocchi customer when she asserted, "I cannot afford what some of your customers can."(24)