I took a Piper Saratoga in recently to their Addison, TX facility for a customer to do a annual/pre-purchase inspection as the seller and had a horrific experience. To start with, the airplane was there almost 60 days. To make things worse, the manager tried to lay partially blame on us for the delay because we opted to overhaul two parts rather than pay for exchanges which saved my client almost $4,000. Mind you, our venders turned both units in just over a week and then they promptly sat on the shelf for a couple of weeks after they were completed. I was told that they were short technicians to install them, yet we were partially responsible for the delay. They somehow damaged an autopilot control cable as we were nearing completion but then ordered the wrong cable, but we were a part of the delay. During a review of the final invoice, there were several items that had been quoted as no charge but yet had labor on the them. They also charged us $101 to ship a battery for the stand by attitude indicator. I understand that this is considered hazmat, but it certainly didn't need to be sent overnight since this was an incoming discrepancy. With a shop rate of $148 and a consumables charge of 6% of that rate, we had an expectation of exemplary customer service but we were sadly disappointed. Full disclosure, I own a maintenance facility myself and I am not complaining about the rate itself considering the state of insurance and labor costs, but if someone is going to charge those kind of rates, the level of service should be equally as high. When we respectfully asked for a labor discount, which we asked for 10%, we were unapologetically told absolutely not. Lastly, we were told that payment was due before we could even test fly the airplane. Mind you, I said test fly, not take home. Plus, there were open items on the annual inspection that required a test flight. I wanted a representative of Cutter to come along to guarantee that we would return and they still said no. Since this was a prebuy it made the transaction that much more complicated considering the invoice was to be paid out of escrow upon closing. Thankfully the airplane did good. I was thankful because the one of the most awful maintenance events of my fairly long career was over and I knew that I would never have to grace the doors of Cutter Aviation ever again because I will never, under any circumstances, be back at any of their facilities! read more
