Well … This is my first step into dealing with maintenance shops as plane owner. Because I didn’t let them pull my Cirrus on the wing tips I was just refused service and shown the door. I was there for an oil change.
As I was searching for a suitable plane to buy I came across one that had suffered severe damage due to a shock to the wing tip while moving it around in the hangar. I explained but the manager at this shop simply was angry like I were attacking his pride.
Good riddance. The only issue with starting a quarrel with the local shop is that one day you might need them due to AOG.
Life is too short to waste time dealing with idiots. Choose the right shop.
PS: Why do you need a shop for an oil change? Women do not respect men who need help doing oil changes… 
…suffered severe damage due to a shock to the wing …
Hitting something with the wingtip and being pushed on the wingtip are completely different load cases. A modern all-composite aircraft structure like that can easily handle a gentle push on the wingtip. But then, what do I know?
You’d think the shop would be a bit more deferential to a customer bringing their aircraft worth several hundred thousand euro to them. I’m not sure I could trust a place with that kind of attitude.
Someone I know was almost killed by damage caused by a load to the wingtip – it was actually his fault – while a student pilot many years ago, taxiing on a wet grass airfield for a flight he tagged the wingtip of the Taylorcraft on a pole. It apparently did no damage so he pulled the plane back from the obstacle, taxied out and went flying. While doing steep turns (60 degrees of bank in those days), that wing’s angle of incidence suddenly and unexpectedly changed. The very high forces at the wing root when he hit the pole had caused a compression fracture to the aft spar (the Taylorcraft wing is aluminium ribs/D box with wood spars) – he flew home very gingerly, fortunately those externally braced high wing designs have a lot of strength in them and the main spar hadn’t been damaged.
When I was living in Houston, someone tagged the wingtip of the club’s C170 on a hangar while taxiing in. It buckled the aft spar, it wasn’t noticed until the annual inspection when the owner (also an IA) saw a very slight wrinkle in the top wing skin he was sure wasn’t there last time he looked at it. So he removed that section of skin revealing this damage.
It is your aeroplane, you are the customer, so you can tell them how you want it handled. They may well be pretty pissed, but, plenty of shops around who would love your revenue 
My pet hate is pulling the thing by the prop, so many people want to drag an aeroplane this way.
I actually have people on the wing tips, not to drag it, but to gently push, and be there if the hanger doors are too narrow.
If my prop couldn’t take my 0.275 hp of hand pulling force i’d be really worried when the full 275 engine hp come online…
I am not sure pushing sensibly on the wing is a big problem but a proper maintenance shop should have a tug.
Shorrick, harks back to my days with Chipmunks, Cubs and the like, ‘it may well start at a moment notice’, Not worried about the strength/force aspect. Oh, and seen it happen on a number of occasions….
Pushing/pulling the base of the prop by a human must be OK.
Pushing the leading edge of a wing, where the rivets to the ribs are, must also be OK (i.e. pushing a plane backwards).
Pushing a plane forwards normally offers fewer options. On the TB20 there are two non-obvious places only, plus pulling the prop, plus the towbar of course.
Stephan_Schwab wrote:
I explained but the manager at this shop simply was angry like I were attacking his pride.
A&Ps tend to have fragile egos
That said, really no problem to gently push or pull on a wing tip by someone who knows what he’s doing .
