Does anybody know why Van's charge $56 for about 30 cents worth of aluminum that contain no 3rd party buyout parts such as hardware, powdercoating, welding, etc? Have they no shame? It seems outrageous that they charge this for in-house scrap material, especially being an SB to repair a faulty design.
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Sb-00053
- Thread starter Mjjstang
- Start date
I'll take you up on that offer if there are any owner and or operators of a reputable business who stand behind their core product here (Not excluding Van's, so please don't read it that way)
But please explain it to me like I'm really dumb.
The cost of the material has little to do with the cost of pushing all the paper they have to do to accommodate this 3+ year old SB...I don't care if it's process an order, photocopy instruction, envelope it and a stamp...you can't even do that for $50 these days...
Let's face it...they have significant overhead that has to be paid every single day. Heat, lights, electricity, building cost, health insurance, property taxes, General and Administrative, Compliance with FAA standards...the list goes on.
Why think they should accommodate you and lose money...?? We've already been down that road. I think we should be sympathetic to the notion that even IF...the mistake is all theirs...it's your plane. $50, $60...even $500 to resolve an issue for longevity or safety is a pittance. You had a choice to buy the part or make your own, if it's that big a deal, I'd have just made my own.
7 or 8 gallons of gas vs...an hour or two of your time?
I always try to take the high road on these issues...we want them healthy for the future.
I've been in business since 1970 and can assure you nothing is free anymore, you're just getting a tiny bit of the actual cost passed on to you. I'm certain they aren't making profit off odds and ends like that. And even if they do...I'm good with that.
You're not dumb because you are addressing the issue that I was implying with my tongue-in-cheek comment.
In more direct language:
I don't know of any other businesses who do what Van's does with respect to customer service and customer loyalty. There's the cost of designing something, testing it and in Van's case, testing it again and again and again when they get feedback from us that there may be problems. Then, as a business, Van's has the unenvyable position of maintaining an inventory a large number of different parts but only small quantities of each of them. That's a lot of overhead. There's paperwork for keeping track of that stuff. That costs money. Maybe they use just-in-time manufacturing for some of them. That's practically free for the materiel, but setting up the tooling and paying someone to verify it, test it, use it and then test the resulting piece costs money.
The other factor that is not unique to Van's is just plain old inflation. One of my personal habits is to periodically pull up an inflation calculator and compare something in today's dollars with 1977 dollars, because that was the year I entered the work force. It's quite insightful to find that after accounting for inflation, many things are actually cheaper today than they used to be.
Because that's what it takes to turn a profit in aviation today. The alternative is going out of business, as we saw.
If it makes you feel better, Textron would have charged $500....
If it makes you feel better, Textron would have charged $500....
I will offer my services to cash any check for $444 to make the total cost equal to the Textron price tag
!You sir...are a giver...I will offer my services to cash any check for $444 to make the total cost equal to the Textron price tag
