Hidden costs coming on the form of wiring (starting with 375 euros) or design (same approach) and not putting a ceiling or a estimate on that. And because it is not estimated, it is not included into the initial contract. But at the end, the costs end up in dozens of thousands.
One may say, it can vary depending on the aircraft and the amount of work, but also this companies have enough experience to know, depending on the aircraft, what are the estimate with a safe margin.
Get the aircraft back? No, it is not airworthy anymore, it is a piece of metal that you cannot move it anywhere, so you are on their hands.
I am treating this as generic, don’t want to go into details at this point, still looking for what to do; and yes, I did pay the full amount to have the airplane released.
I nowadays earn a living mostly in procurement in aviation. The main three evils I see in procurement processes (two of which also apply to many other ad-hoc or specialised procurement matters like house reforms) are:
Doing a good job on #3 is the best way to mitigate the other two . Do not underestimate the amount of effort that goes into providing a good specification. A good avionics provider should spend a lot of resources in assisting the average GA owner define the spec for his airplane’s avionics project, but that is costly and most do not get reimbursed for it. So the only way to recover is to charge more, which goes back to the conflict with #2.
As a consequence you can divide suppliers into two groups:
-Those who just want to get the business and ensure to quote competitive market prices, then hope to address and recover it later, perhaps the case in the OP.
-Those who want to maintain a high-quality (and a lot of times high-integrity) standard and then hugely increase their margins to make up for lacking spec and unknowns.
Then there is of course the worst: the third group who taking advantage of the lack of competition, quote high and still lack the integrity to help the customer in providing a good spec. I run away from those as far as I can.
lmsl1967 wrote:
Currently I cannot say much about the work outcome, since the price I end up paying largelly exceded the agreed contract and I am still analysing what are going to be my next steps on that.
Did they update you during the process?
I had a similar thing happen when I did my upgrade but the fact of the matter was that both me and the shop were overly optimistic on several issues. What finally was installed differed significantly (primarily in the work compartment) from what we originally projected. In no particular order, some of the things I remember which had to be done in addition (this was 2014):
- GNS430 upgrade to WAAS (was not previewed but thankful that some of my pilots pointed me to it, would no longer be possible today) plus antenna change
- Remote announcer which they had 2nd hand did not do the job (wrong PN), so new one sourced.
- AP got upgraded to Autotrim, as it turned out the offer (get a 55x for the price of a 30) did not include that and we missed that when ordering.
- Layout as originally planned did not work in the end (existing panel, so the first time we saw that the instruments would not fit in the back was when we tried to put them)
And several more. Add to that documentation which was enormeous (at the time there was still IFR certification necessary).
So my first steps here would be to go through all the posts and check off what was originally in the offer, what was on top, was it communicated e.t.c. I find that most of the time I find that the big money mistakes get made during offer time, when you tink “I don’t need that” and then still want it during construction.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Did they update you during the process?
On the works yes, and everytime that changes where needed, I was taking the decisions and the costs agreed. My complain in the increase comes from initial plan hidden installation costs like wiring (that when they mention price of the product and installation, one assume it already includes) and design (the sane as installation).
Antonio wrote:
the third group who taking advantage of the lack of competition
Yes it is a problem, it was extremely difficult to get proper quotations from available companies. Several I contacted with my options, at the end it resumed to 2, and my final option was immediate availability while the second one could only start when the first was supposed to end.
I do understand that cheap and good do not walk hand-by-hand, I do understand that a good service costs and that companies are on the market to have a profit and not for charity and that business owners have salaries to by every month. But I do appreciate transparency, and I would have done the work anyway, the safety I get from it, the comfort and the fun overcomes the expenses (also because fortunately I can, otherwise I would adjust my expectations). At the all ends with honesty, trust and allowing your client to be prepared, which in my case, and honestly I was expecting and prepared for 20% more, I had other compromises that suddenly I had to stop, and that had considerable financial implications.
Am I going to be satisfied with the outcome, most likely. I only had the change to briefly fly from there to LJPZ and after deviate to Genoa, because of weather, and leave it there for a friend to fly it back to base (I had to return to work less than 48 hours after, and a cold front was right in the way). But being satisfied is the natural state of a client that pays for a service (or at least it should be) not a reason to be overbilled.
lmsl1967 wrote:
Unfortunatelly, it seems to be a common practice to underestimate costs, at present at the end a significant bill, knowing that they have you by your wallet.
My avionics installer refuses to give a fixed price to avoid precisely this kind of situation. If forced, he will give a rough estimate of work time from which you can work out the approximate cost. So far his estimates have been quite good…
The key requirement is communication and few shops do this well. This goes together with project management which almost nobody does well… even the technically best shops I have known used to sit on a plane until the customer was screaming down the phone and then it would be “all to battle stations”.
You don’t need a PhD to realise that “fait accompli” is a very effective method. The famous British Builder (and I am sure builders in every other country) has honed this to perfection. And he is nothing as bright as an avionics guy. I once asked a builder (a £50k job) “why don’t you quote only on jobs which you can actually do?” and his reply was “we would go bust”. I will spare you the list of tricks he used, but it started with parking a mini digger in our drive, which delayed getting harrassed by a month 
Unfortunately, this is a recurring issue in Europe, because most countries in Europe don’t have any good shops, so people travel a long way. And not being able to just drop in to inspect the job part-way will produce the same result as expecting some builder to do a perfect renovation on your Biiirmingham house while you are sunnying yourself in Spain and sending him whatsapp messages This is a fairly extreme case where distance (and resulting impossibility of “dropping in”) was a major factor.
Read this and check under Installer Performance. It was only because I drove up halfway through (a 2hr+ drive) that I found really bad bodges, although the “best stuff” was found only during an Annual which was done immediately afterwards (for good reasons).
The problem from the shop’s POV is that the customer brings him some 50 year old wreck containing 20kg of wiring of which 15kg is dead wire, and you need to only touch something to make XYZ stop working and then the shop gets blamed for it. So fixed price work is hard to do. But communication can be used to work around this.
These threads cause avionics installers boycott EuroGA but would owners be better served if this discussion was suppressed?
Avionic installers find themselves between a rock & a hard place, there are always unforeseen problems with retro fits, if you add a little fat to contract someone will undercut you.
Now guess what happens when the low quote contract winner finds the unforeseen problem.
As I work in the field I get to hear both sides on a regular basis. I think most shops do not take advantage of their customers. Often it is simply a lot of work of which most is a one off. Imagine what a car would cost if they would start from scratch for each any every one produced. A part of the solution is probably at the end of the manufacturers. The devices must be designed more towards an easy installation. So less separate boxes, smaller boxes which do not take up so much space behind the panel. Boxes with standard connectors and standard cables. We should eventually come to a situation for example with a redundant CAN bus where you simply connect all components. This wiring business is just crazy. If I want to plug in some component in a data center I do not make a cable from scratch either but I take one which was industrially made…
That’s all true also, but are the solutions so hard?
Most shops are unable to manage the process.
Most are unwilling to even enter into a basic dialogue about legal requirements, where it would reduce their revenue. This is a reply from one well known UK shop in such a situation
OK Peter
Enough from you, please do not contact me again, look at getting this and any other work done somewhere else
Regards
xxxx
Avionics Director / Owner
But then these upgrades are sometimes just wonderful. Look at this one (skip to 17:20 for the more descriptive part):
