Gouged

ahmad

ahmad

Line Up and Wait
Joined
Apr 9, 2017
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576
Location
S Illinois
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Midwest Aviator
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KMVN
Am I being gouged as bad as I think or am I just freaking out? I've had this place over charge like crazy before on other stuff but I wanted the convenience this time so I used them again. Screenshot_20251117_121112_Adobe Acrobat.jpgScreenshot_20251117_121133_Adobe Acrobat.jpg
 
BOHICA

even on certified stuff there's a little owner maintenance allowed.
 
Looks like they charged you an hour each for the oil change and seat track AD, seems fair to me. As far as the IFR cert, you should have known that price up front, And it also looks fair to me.
 
I don't view those prices as excessive.
I do most of my own and it takes that amount of time or more. The ifr cert is in line too.
(In my comments, I don't have the bias of being a shop or holding out to others in any way)
Rural Texas
 
There is sort of a “Hidden Charge” with AD in that the A&P must first read

it and possibly related SB. Not a big thing but it may require leaving the

aircraft and checking with the computer and possibly printing out.

Inspection procedures, torques and clearances are often best not left to

memory. Maybe 15 minutes of the 1 hour charge?
 
I got charged $800 for JUST an oil and filter change one time when I first got my 182 5 years ago. So this seems about right.

It did motivate me to start doing it myself.
 
Other than the $53 for the oil sample kit, which you can get for free from Blackstone, looks reasonable.
 
As you should have already predicted, chat is telling you all is well. shocker. They're technically correct in that it is in line with current prices. I'll give you my take as the resident class traitor in here:

I used to own a 150, and generally played in the sub-60K market for the duration of my tenure, in the "good ol days" of the 20 aught and 10s... you know the land of milk and honey where I could have a non-working spouse, rent, and own 3 airplanes on 60% of the net income I do today with two workers, a mortgage and no airplane. But clown Jerome telling me inflation is transitory, as his "board of governors" take out food and energy from the core CPI. clown shoes for the main clowns.

At any rate, this is the problem with that aircraft rung. Certified makes it even less economical because the regulatory "tax" is flat-fee, making it outsized relative to the capex in a way it isn't for something like a twin turbo piston. Basically, those costs would be identical for a much more capable single engine piston, making the more expensive plane cheaper per capita, IF you insist on playing in certified land. Which is why a 150 is meant to be rung out by grifty flight schools, not owned personally, especially if the onus is on "cheap time building". The 172RG would be an even more egregious example, though with TAA it has largely become obsolete even in that context. I'm not exagerating when I say a parallel valve O-540 [field] overhaul would have been cheaper than the angle valve 360 that kicked me out the hobby. Similar principle.

As to the line item themselves, as chat has already highlighted, it's in line with the current reality. That's what monopoly money does when everybody shrugs their shoulders at the Fed stealing your labor value so "institutional investors" (...and certain favored payrolls) could be made whole.
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Instead of getting mad at the provider, get mad at the purchasers of your labor. How come it's ok for everyone to pass thru their inflation on to you, but the second you try the same it's all of a sudden blasphemy? Don't answer that I'm being rhetorical. See organized labor and regulatory capture/lobbying figured it out a while ago; go get rid of the Jones Act and watch the mice jump off the proverbial ship around here. Digressing.

Start getting mad, or start cheating. I'm never gonna allocute on a public forum, but I sincerely suggest going forward, experimental would be the only remaining way to semi-keep up with the labor theft of present circumstances. It can be done in the certified side, but 1 2 3 4 fif, I pleadeth the fif. :devil: :fingerwag:
 
Looks very fair to me. Both the oil change and the IFR recert. is all near the bottom range for the same procedures in my local. There was not even an upcharge on the oil, as far as I see, and a fair price for it at that.
 
Oil change: you got a GOOD deal. I never got out the door for less than $350 for an oil change, and that's with only +3 extra qts of oil built into the price. Also, my shop would charge me about $2 more per quart, and that was 3 years ago.
AD Inspection: If it's just taking the 2 seats out and looking at the tracks, you might have overpaid. But not by a significant amount.
Pitot/Static: I paid $300 for my pitot/static check 3 months ago, and the guy who performed them flew out to me in his own Cessna 172 to do the test. But this price was agreed to in advance.
 
flyingron said:
:(Gouge? Looks like a steal. I'd be hard pressed to do all that oil change in an hour of labor.
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On some planes, you don't need to pull the cowl. Just hook up a hose to the quick-drain and shove a tray under the filter before unscrewing it.

Unfortunately not the case with the OP's 150.

ahmad said:
Am I being gouged as bad as I think or am I just freaking out?
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If they don't give you the sample report, then yes. Everything else looks fair.
 
Both of those invoices are less than one AMU. A lineman could come out to the plane, check to make sure I'm wearing my seatbelt, bill me less than an AMU and I'd smile and thank him for making sure I was keeping safe.
 
asicer said:
On some planes, you don't need to pull the cowl. Just hook up a hose to the quick-drain and shove a tray under the filter before unscrewing it.

Unfortunately not the case with the OP's 150.
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Even when I had a quick drain, you still have to remove and cut the filter, box up the sample, ditch the used oil, put on a new filter, refill the oil, and test run the aircraft. It would still be a rush to get it done in an hour.
 
very similar to what I pay in the Las Vegas area; I actually pay $25 more for the oil change and $25 less for the IFR check...
 
TCABM said:
OP could shave about $160 off that invoice if he did his own oil change.
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And sometimes when I’m doing mine and think about that small additional expense I wonder Why? am i spending all this time getting dirty, procuring parts, arranging disposal, & assuming the liability?
Of well, 6x per year would add up… and i enjoy it
 
Just chiming into the chorus here, yes that looks perfectly reasonable to me, at least within the context of aviation!
 
flyingron said:
Even when I had a quick drain, you still have to remove and cut the filter, box up the sample, ditch the used oil, put on a new filter, refill the oil, and test run the aircraft. It would still be a rush to get it done in an hour.
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My local garbage company offers curbside pickup for used oil and they supply the jugs. Boxing up the sample doesn't take more than a couple minutes. Cutting the filter can take a while, though.
 
alright fair enough. I was thinking I was being gouged because the plane was already in for the oil change so all they had to do was look at the seat rails for the AD. I still don't get why a pitot static test cost as much as it does but I have to remind myself that nothing is cheap in aviation.

Thank you all for the responses.
 
ahmad said:
alright fair enough. I was thinking I was being gouged because the plane was already in for the oil change so all they had to do was look at the seat rails for the AD.
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It takes 1 hour to do the oil change.

To properly do the seat rail inspection would also take about an hour.

So you were charged 2 hours labor.
ahmad said:
I still don't get why a pitot static test cost as much as it does but I have to remind myself that nothing is cheap in aviation.
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The shop has overhead. A building, phones, computer, insurance, etc. included is the test equipment they use to perform the test. It has to be purchased and then recalibrated occasionally.

It takes time to do the inspection. So $400 flat rate seems very reasonable, considering everything involved.
 
$110 an hour ? Local auto techs charge $140-170/hr. or more.

I don't see a problem with anything presented here. If you are 'cost sensitive' you can always ask for a written quote.
 
Initiating a Work Order and the Log Entry take time as well.
 
If the shop has a process in place there would be a quickbooks template (or some other software) where you would have this stuff prepopulated and only needed to click some checkboxes.

When I ran my company admin work was easily 20-30% of my time until I spent the money on a CRM suite to automate billing/payments/etc. Was a good chunk of cash and took time to set up but it lowered my monthly per customer overhead to almost nothing. CPA liked it as it gave reports that they needed, lowering their billable hours and saved me more money. My customer base was ~2200 clients so saving a dollar/customer/month was a huge windfall.

For a shop the real savings would be in inventory control and managing billable hours and invoicing.
 
340/hr at the local BMW stealership FWIW.

Have you priced pitot-static testers, training, and calibration for those things? I thought the $400 was the least objectionable part of the whole thing.
 
pfarber said:
If the shop has a process in place there would be a quickbooks template (or some other software) where you would have this stuff prepopulated and only needed to click some checkboxes.

When I ran my company admin work was easily 20-30% of my time until I spent the money on a CRM suite to automate billing/payments/etc. Was a good chunk of cash and took time to set up but it lowered my monthly per customer overhead to almost nothing. CPA liked it as it gave reports that they needed, lowering their billable hours and saved me more money. My customer base was ~2200 clients so saving a dollar/customer/month was a huge windfall.

For a shop the real savings would be in inventory control and managing billable hours and invoicing.
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It's amazing to me how many small businesses have not caught on to how technology can help them. Sure, it costs money - But it costs WAY less money than having extra people to do admin stuff (or wasting your own time doing admin stuff if you're a sole proprietor) and, done right, it allows you to get more money from your customers AND make them happier at the same time.
 
schmookeeg said:
340/hr at the local BMW stealership FWIW.

Have you priced pitot-static testers, training, and calibration for those things? I thought the $400 was the least objectionable part of the whole thing.
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Yikes! 240 at ours, and I thought that was bad…
 
Read through the seat/rail AD and try it yourself. You might scratch your head a few times and then lay out some cash for the various gauges available to make taking the measurements easier.
There's an AMOC you can utilize to get you past 100 hours on the inspection if you fly more than 100 hours between annuals.
Those charges are right in line with what I'd expect. If you did the oil change yourself you'd save maybe $130 tops.
 
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