Probably not the case here, but a good call from Peter.
The 28 hours if I understand correctly was to remove,
diagnose and replace the left magneto. The mag overhaul itself was subject to an additional €2300 outside charge, which is also very high. Perhaps point out the lower catalog price available to anybody.
For labor I’d agree that 2.8 hours would be a reasonable charge where 28 hours was charged. Perhaps a little high considering that the cowling was already removed for the Annual, but if you want to be polite in negotiation…
For a four cylinder Lycoming with dual mags I think the left mag issue described is legitimately about a 1300 $ or € additional charge in conjunction with an Annual, or that the charges are about four times too high.
A couple of years ago we paid about 3500 euro for two new magnetos for a Lyc O-360.
I hope you get this sorted, it does not sound right. A shop should know not to spend that many hours when a new magneto is no that expensive.
I had to have one magneto removed and OH’d as part of the recent AD on a batch of magnetos, pre VAT it was GBP555, and I estimate around 2 hours labour.
dublinpilot wrote:
“Looks like a mistake was made on my invoice. It’s marked as 28 hours for a mags overhaul, which is obviously a mistake. I suspect it was 2.8 hours and the decimal point was just missed by whoever was doing up the invoice. I was quoted €1K”
This was exactly what I was thinking as well. Plan to make that call this morning to see what happens.
I called them this morning, and suggested the incorrect decimal place as @dublinpilot mentioned, and that perhaps they mistakenly billed me for a TCM factory OH exchange. He said he would investigate and get back to me this week. At least the expectations have been set in a friendly manner, so hopefully they do the right thing and all is well. Aside from the project management and communication deficiencies which are unfortunately typical for the industry, I’ve not found any reason to suspect dishonesty in the past, so hopefully this is a misunderstanding.
One interesting bit here is that I’ve asked about the mags on a couple of occasions in the past, and I’ve gotten the response that they don’t work on Bendix mags and always send them to a shop in Zeeland. I do wonder if perhaps an overzealous mechanic just got carried away messing around with it without official sanction. I may never know, which is also fine as long as it gets sorted.
Peter has it bang on. You must give the guy an out so he can to some degree save face otherwise you risk entrenchment.
Anything over £100 I always get a written quote by email. Every time. Aeroplane, car, house, you name it.
Good luck
Certainly here in the UK; where you dispute a bill for work done your best course of action is to officially pay under protest in writing. This way you get to remove your goods/property and continue to enjoy the use of it. You can then take legal action if you think you have a genuine case and try to recover the money.
A company has a legal right to retain possesion of your property (a lien) until the bill is settled and may even charge you storage for it if their ts and cs express such.
Naturally, the best first course of action is to simply have a conversation to see if there’s been a genuine mistake. My money in this case is on it being “28” instead of “2.8” hours on the invoice.
I used to have a good friend that ran an aircraft engineering firm and I often berated him for letting customers take their aircraft away before settling their bill.
Pig wrote:
Anything over £100 I always get a written quote by email. Every time. Aeroplane, car, house, you name it.
What do you do if a quote is refused? Our avionics shop never gives quotes because, as they say, it is impossible to know in advance how much work is needed for an installation on a particular aircraft. When pressed, they do give informal estimates of the number of hours required which so far have turned out to be fairly accurate.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Our avionics shop never gives quotes because, as they say, it is impossible to know in advance how much work is needed for an installation on a particular aircraft. When pressed, they do give informal estimates of the number of hours required which so far have turned out to be fairly accurate.
While I’m assuming (hoping) this is a billing error, I am fine with the estimate approach as long as any significant change in scope is communicated and I consent to further work. Obviously neither case happened here, and obviously I would have consented to neither 28 hrs of “investigation” or whatnot nor an overhaul cost equivalent to a factory OH exchange.
