Why No Prebuys???

weirdjim

weirdjim

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weirdjim
TomD, Silvaire, please chime in here ...

I do not do prebuys. I've been burned a couple of times and just refuse to do them. Why?

I did a prebuy in the middle of April with the OAT around 75°F or so. There was no evidence of any fuel leaks around the tanks. At 120°F on the ramp a year later, one of the tanks leaked. The owner threatened to take me to court. Which was cheaper, a tank or a lawyer? And no guarantee that I would win.

I did a prebuy on an aircraft that later developed a crack in the landing gear leg. It was apparent that whoever pre-owned the aircraft had "bondo" repaired the crack and did a damned nice paint job over it, covering it up. Again, which was cheaper, a new gear leg or a lawyer?

Sorry, folks, a prebuy is NOT a guarantee of your airplane being pristine under any and all conditions and for all eternity. For those of you doing prebuys, my hat is off to you and I wish you well.

An annual? NO PROBLEM. A prebuy, not a chance in hell.

Thanks,

Jim
 
weirdjim said:
TomD, Silvaire, please chime in here ...

I do not do prebuys. I've been burned a couple of times and just refuse to do them. Why?

I did a prebuy in the middle of April with the OAT around 75°F or so. There was no evidence of any fuel leaks around the tanks. At 120°F on the ramp a year later, one of the tanks leaked. The owner threatened to take me to court. Which was cheaper, a tank or a lawyer? And no guarantee that I would win.

I did a prebuy on an aircraft that later developed a crack in the landing gear leg. It was apparent that whoever pre-owned the aircraft had "bondo" repaired the crack and did a damned nice paint job over it, covering it up. Again, which was cheaper, a new gear leg or a lawyer?

Sorry, folks, a prebuy is NOT a guarantee of your airplane being pristine under any and all conditions and for all eternity. For those of you doing prebuys, my hat is off to you and I wish you well.

An annual? NO PROBLEM. A prebuy, not a chance in hell.

Thanks,

Jim
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Prebuys for A&P's are simply not worth the time and money. All the buyer has to do once he discovers a problem (real or perceived) is get a bottom dweller lawyer and claim negligence on the part of the A&P. And like you just stated, it's often cheaper to replace the part or pay them rather than try to fight it.

I would never do a prebuy for anyone.
 
Can't you be sued for both? Something breaks a week after annual/maintenance.
 
ejensen said:
Can't you be sued for both? Something breaks a week after annual/maintenance.
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You can be sued for putting your pants on one leg at a time in the morning. In the case of a prebuy, you are essentially telling the new owner that there is nothing wrong with the airplane.

In the case of an annual, you are telling the owner that AT THE TIME IT WAS INSPECTED there was nothing wrong with the airplane.

The difference is that, as you can see, an airplane can disintegrate ten minutes after the annual and there is no liability. If the airplane coughs ten months after the prebuy, it is your fault for not finding it.

The other difference is that the inspection of an annual is WELL prescribed in Federal Law part 43. There is no such prescription for a prebuy. If I'm standing before the judge with my checkoff sheet in hand for an annual in accordance with Federal Law that is one thing. If I'm standing there hat in hand saying that I looked the airplane over and didn't find anything wrong, that is subject to interpretation.

Again, G'bless all of y'all who are doing prebuys. Double your fees and I'm right there with you. But as for me, not a chance in hell.

Thanks,

Jim
 
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I can think of instances where a pre-buy was of value. One was on a Piper Arrow with countersunk rivets in the wing skins. Totally unairworthy repair. Buyer was hot to trot for the pretty paint job and new interior. I may have saved him some grief and aggravation.
 
weirdjim said:
The difference is that, as you can see, an airplane can disintegrate ten minutes after the annual and there is no liability. If the airplane coughs ten months after the prebuy, it is your fault for not finding it.
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There is nothing about that statement that is remotely correct from a legal standpoint, though I understand your frustration.

An annual is no protection, but at least you make some more money off of it. The best way to protect yourself on a pre-buy is to have an agreed upon scope of the inspection and an indemnity agreement. The latter should hold up in most courts, but likely would not for an annual inspection.
 
Norman said:
I can think of instances where a pre-buy was of value. One was on a Piper Arrow with countersunk rivets in the wing skins. Totally unairworthy repair. Buyer was hot to trot for the pretty paint job and new interior. I may have saved him some grief and aggravation.
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But that's not what the OP has issue with. The value of a pre-buy to a potential owner is obvious.

What Jim is saying is that the A&P's legal liability for performing the pre-buy far exceeds any monetary compensation he might receive, and therefore he has no interest in performing them.
 
Kristin said:
There is nothing about that statement that is remotely correct from a legal standpoint, though I understand your frustration.

An annual is no protection, but at least you make some more money off of it. The best way to protect yourself on a pre-buy is to have an agreed upon scope of the inspection and an indemnity agreement. The latter should hold up in most courts, but likely would not for an annual inspection.
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The problem with that scope of work and indemnity agreement holding up in court...is the fact that you are in court, and therefore a lawyer you had to pay is standing next to you.
 
Jim I get your anger and I agree that you can get sued for a lot of things. But if you have a decent "Prebuy" contract setting forth the scope of work and what the pre buy is and is NOT intended to uncover as well as having a dispute resolution clause, I think it will go a long way to avoiding problems.
 
3393RP said:
The problem with that scope of work and indemnity agreement holding up in court...is the fact that you are in court, and therefore a lawyer you had to pay is standing next to you.
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Those documents have a useful effect in making it more difficult for the buyer to find a lawyer to take a case. Even when charging by the hour, it is hard to get a lawyer to take a case that he/she will lose, and lose quickly. They run a risk of being sanctioned, though admittedly, that is practically a fairly small threat.

But you are correct, you might have to hire a lawyer. It has gotten so you practically need to be a lawyer to safely exercise the privileges of an IA.
 
ejensen said:
Can't you be sued for both? Something breaks a week after annual/maintenance.
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This is why a solid pre purchase contract is a MUST , if you have solid language that doesn't express warranty and uses phrases "accepted as is" ( AOPA contract works) you are fine . But don't try to "hide problems" and think they won't get discovered .

If someone called me a year later about a fuel tank ... Hey welcome to airplane ownership ... Sorry dude
 
Kristin said:
There is nothing about that statement that is remotely correct from a legal standpoint, though I understand your frustration.

An annual is no protection, but at least you make some more money off of it. The best way to protect yourself on a pre-buy is to have an agreed upon scope of the inspection and an indemnity agreement. The latter should hold up in most courts, but likely would not for an annual inspection.
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I"m sure that you can sign JD after your name, Kristin, but as you know if you are in the California bar that you cannot sign away your rights. Any indemnity agreement is arguably signing away those rights. At least that's how I"D plead it if I were the plaintiff.

THanks,

Jim
 
Sigh.... Honestly both prebuy a I've don't haven't discovered much, that said when I bough my last plane, which cost about as much as a house, I would have been a straight fool not to have a AP IA with experience with type look at it first.
 
weirdjim said:
I"m sure that you can sign JD after your name, Kristin, but as you know if you are in the California bar that you cannot sign away your rights. Any indemnity agreement is arguably signing away those rights. At least that's how I"D plead it if I were the plaintiff.
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Yes, I can put JD after my name without being guilty of misrepresentation. I am also a member of the California bar. More to the point, I have a dozen years of experience defending aviation cases. I have segued out of that, but haven't forgotten what I learned.

You absolutely can give up your rights in California, under certain circumstances. Your absolute statement is incorrect. You can't do it in all circumstances. Essentially it depends on there being some equality of bargaining position. So a hospital cannot make you sign away your rights before they treat you. However, you are under no compulsion to buy a plane or have a pre-purchase inspection performed. I think it is likely that the California courts would uphold a waiver of liability in the context of a pre-purchase inspection. Because an annual inspection is required, I am not entirely sure that California courts would uphold a waiver of liability for an annual inspection. If you want to read up on how a court might treat the issue, Google "Booth v. Santa Barbara Bi-Planes" and read the case. That case upheld a waiver of liability.

Of course, if you are doing annuals and pre-purchase inspections, you ought to have at least minimum insurance so that the insurer provides you a lawyer to deal with a**holes who threaten suit like that.
 
James331 said:
Sigh.... Honestly both prebuy a I've don't haven't discovered much, that said when I bough my last plane, which cost about as much as a house, I would have been a straight fool not to have a AP IA with experience with type look at it first.
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A 4C on a Falcon 900 is a couple thousand man hours with 3 to 6 months downtime. A prebuy will be less than 10% of that.

Translate to a high wing cessna - when was the last time the interior headliners, side walls and fuel tank covers off? No one wants to pull the interior because the pastic is as brittle as eggshells, guess where suprises will be after the sale goes thru :rolleyes2:
 
When a buyer doesn't know enough about the type of aircraft they want to buy, to do their own pre-buy inspection they better do their home work.

I never do pre-buy inspections,I'd rather teach the new owner the information they need to know.

When they are not interested in doing it that way, they can find some one else.

Never sign a contract, When it is written down they can hold you to it.

Never tell a buyer that the aircraft is anything. It is what it is. where it is, If the buyer isn't smart enough to know that they are too stupid to be an owner anyway.

And I never charge for teaching a new owner what they need to know to be a smart owner. That way they get what they paid for, an opinion.
 
bnt83 said:
Translate to a high wing cessna - when was the last time the interior headliners, side walls and fuel tank covers off? No one wants to pull the interior because the pastic is as brittle as eggshells, guess where suprises will be after the sale goes thru :rolleyes2:
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Tell me what's under a interior part of a 172/182/ that is of interest to an inspector at annual time
 
Tom-D said:
Tell me what's under a interior part of a 172/182/ that is of interest to an inspector at annual time
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Seat rail issues, skin corrosion, rigging and pulley issues to name a few.

FWIW, I agree from a practical (not necessarily legal) standpoint. Pre-buys are a waste of money. If you want to feel confident that you're buying a solid plane, an annual is the clearest way to do so. It is the safest way for both buyer and seller to feel secure in the transaction, and it eliminates most potential gremlins.

You can read through my posts from the November, 2014-January, 2015 timeframe. Opting for an annual saved my hide to the tune of $17k on issues that a pre-buy would not have clearly found.
 
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I've done a few but don't do them anymore. The problem, as has already been described fully, is the lack of definition and the heightened expectations of the person funding it. When you do an annual the owner gets a bill that can be from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. After a pre-buy the guy drops maybe thirty or eighty grand to buy the airplane and although a subsequent discovery of a problem doesn't mean he has lost all of that investment the attitudes you get would lead you believe that they have.

Also, when you do them they want some kind of elaborate report of some sort. It's more like a sales or brokerage type of deal and that's not my cup of tea. I know people buying an airplane for such large amounts of money need to have someone experienced check it over and there are guys out there who will do it. I'm just not one of them.
 
ahkahn said:
Seat rail issues, skin corrosion, rigging and pulley issues to name a few.

FWIW, I agree from a practical (not necessarily legal) standpoint. Pre-buys are a waste of money. If you want to feel confident that you're buying a solid plane, an annual is the clearest way to do so. It is the safest way for both buyer and seller to feel secure in the transaction, and it eliminates most potential gremlins.

You can read through my posts from the November, 2014-January, 2015 timeframe. Opting for an annual saved my hide to the tune of $17k on issues that a pre-buy would not have clearly found.
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An annual only tells you that parts of the plane are minimally airworthy at the time. It doesn't give you the kind of information you need to make an economic assessment. A typical annual doesn't fly the plane and doesn't determine whether the avionics work, have the latest revisions, etc. Depending on who is doing the annual-for-the-purposes-of-purchase, it may or may not flag to the owner how much time is left before significant inspections or point out things like the fact that the fuel bladders are 30 years old and probably on their last legs.

In reality, the quality of the information that the buyer receives depends more on the inspector than the putative type of inspection being performed.
 
I do pre-buys all of the time. Sticking with pretty much the same aircraft most of the time really works out for me. I know where to look. I also provide a retail estimate of what it will take to address the squawks. They can negotiate that into the final price and fly away with the new plane.

As for my insurance. I carry a lot and need it to be allowed to do my job on the road. I don't think it will help me on non-discovered items wether I'm doing an annual or a pre-buy. I think it does me the most good if I were to cause damage their aircraft or someone else's while doing my job.
 
ahkahn said:
You can read through my posts from the November, 2014-January, 2015 timeframe. Opting for an annual saved my hide to the tune of $17k on issues that a pre-buy would not have clearly found.
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There is no definition of a pre-buy evaluation like there is for an annual so you really can't make that statement. In my case, when buying my second plane, I had a pre-buy evaluation completed that was far more entailed than a standard annual would have been. This evaluation did, however, include everything required for the annual and, thus, were also signed off as an annual.

This sign-off was done on a sticky-back and, had I not bought the plane, would have never entered the logbook.

When I bought my first plane I was yet to be educated in the world of aviation and was far less diligent. I was lucky that it was a good plane. A friend who was an A&P reviewed the logs, he found a few things, but there was no physical inspection whatsoever.
 
kmead said:
I do pre-buys all of the time. Sticking with pretty much the same aircraft most of the time really works out for me. I know where to look. I also provide a retail estimate of what it will take to address the squawks. They can negotiate that into the final price and fly away with the new plane.

As for my insurance. I carry a lot and need it to be allowed to do my job on the road. I don't think it will help me on non-discovered items wether I'm doing an annual or a pre-buy. I think it does me the most good if I were to cause damage their aircraft or someone else's while doing my job.
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^^^^^
Did my pre-buy.
Caught some obscure items.
100% dealt with in purchasing process.
 
What's the legal definition of a pre-buy? Does any mechanic offer a signed condition letter or make any warranty after doing one of these inspections? If not, why in the world would anyone pay for one?

You guys crack me up. I don't know any mechanics who would do a "pre-buy" inspection. It has no definition and therefore provides no credibility. I might have my own mechanic take a glance at a plane for an opinion about something but that's based on a friendship relationship and trust. I had a friend take a glance at a Cub for my nephew to see if he thought it was worth sending for a full annual ahead of a purchase. Very unofficial, very non-binding. To hire a stranger to look at an unfamiliar airplane for me? That will never happen.
 
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Tom-D said:
......Never tell a buyer that the aircraft is anything. It is what it is. where it is, If the buyer isn't smart enough to know that they are too stupid to be an owner anyway...........
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I believe you ARE CORRECT!
 
kmead said:
I do pre-buys all of the time. Sticking with pretty much the same aircraft most of the time really works out for me. I know where to look. I also provide a retail estimate of what it will take to address the squawks. They can negotiate that into the final price and fly away with the new plane.

As for my insurance. I carry a lot and need it to be allowed to do my job on the road. I don't think it will help me on non-discovered items wether I'm doing an annual or a pre-buy. I think it does me the most good if I were to cause damage their aircraft or someone else's while doing my job.
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Hi Kevin! We met at Mangon's a year or so ago.

You raise a good point about pre-buys. A buyer is best served when they find some specifically familiar with the particular airplane they are trying to buy. For that reason, I limit myself to the aircraft I know and would refer someone to an expert if I did know the aircraft.

As for insurance, you may have coverage if you missed something, depending on what happened. Between a contract with limitations of liability and your insurance policy, you should be able to protect yourself.
 
weirdjim said:
The carry-through spar under the headliner?

Jim
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Saw a 210 that was equipped with a new headliner, that apparently had been way over treated with fire retardants or some other corrosive chemicals because it was a terrible mess up there. Don't know what its fate was.
 
Stewartb said:
What's the legal definition of a pre-buy? Does any mechanic offer a signed condition letter or make any warranty after doing one of these inspections? If not, why in the world would anyone pay for one?

You guys crack me up. I don't know any mechanics who would do a "pre-buy" inspection. It has no definition and therefore provides no credibility. I might have my own mechanic take a glance at a plane for an opinion about something but that's based on a friendship relationship and trust. I had a friend take a glance at a Cub for my nephew to see if he thought it was worth sending for a full annual ahead of a purchase. Very unofficial, very non-binding. To hire a stranger to look at an unfamiliar airplane for me? That will never happen.
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If you want information about the aircraft that you can not obtain for yourself, you hire someone who can provide that information. If you want a warranty that the plane is perfect, then buy a new one from the factory. You are confusing the two issues.

Thank god for buyers that don't get a pre-buy inspection. How else would all those poor brokers unload their hangar queens.
 
The only inspection that means anything is an annual inspection. If you inspected it? Sign your name to it. And for me I'd need to know the mechanic to have any trust in the sign-off.
 
Stewartb said:
The only inspection that means anything is an annual inspection. If you inspected it? Sign your name to it. And for me I'd need to know the mechanic to have any trust in the sign-off.
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Tell that to the folks I bought my PA 46 from...they fixed about 15 squawks based on a nebulous "pre-buy"
 
Tom-D said:
Tell me what's under a interior part of a 172/182/ that is of interest to an inspector at annual time
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Our flying club pulls the plastic every annual, looking for corrosion. That's especially important with our C177RG.
 
Kristin said:
An annual only tells you that parts of the plane are minimally airworthy at the time. It doesn't give you the kind of information you need to make an economic assessment. A typical annual doesn't fly the plane and doesn't determine whether the avionics work, have the latest revisions, etc. Depending on who is doing the annual-for-the-purposes-of-purchase, it may or may not flag to the owner how much time is left before significant inspections or point out things like the fact that the fuel bladders are 30 years old and probably on their last legs.

In reality, the quality of the information that the buyer receives depends more on the inspector than the putative type of inspection being performed.
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This is all true, but an annual should/would be a major cornerstone of a purchase for me. Not the only cornerstone, but a major one. Your points about test flight, avionics check, and annual would be the major decision points for me on assessing how solid the purchase is.

Of course, any purchase would be rock solid if we all had crystal balls...
 
ahkahn said:
This is all true, but an annual should/would be a major cornerstone of a purchase for me. Not the only cornerstone, but a major one. Your points about test flight, avionics check, and annual would be the major decision points for me on assessing how solid the purchase is.

Of course, any purchase would be rock solid if we all had crystal balls...
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I'd much rather have brass or steel ones.
 
JimNtexas said:
Our flying club pulls the plastic every annual, looking for corrosion. That's especially important with our C177RG.
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They should have pulled it once, protected it, and left it alone.
 
ahkahn said:
This is all true, but an annual should/would be a major cornerstone of a purchase for me. Not the only cornerstone, but a major one. Your points about test flight, avionics check, and annual would be the major decision points for me on assessing how solid the purchase is.

Of course, any purchase would be rock solid if we all had crystal balls...
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Gotta remember any aircraft you buy is going to be a project to you, because you can't buy the prefect aircraft.
 
EdFred said:
'til the mice arrive. Ask azure about that one.
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I don't believe that aircraft was coated with preservative, mice don't like that stuff. had it been coated properly the mouse pee would have not done any damage.
 
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