Nigel,
Good comment: I wondered whether I was just a bad case, but clearly I'm
not. I ordered my XS Mono accellerated kit over 2 years ago and and paid
for it more than 18 months ago. When I paid I collected what I thought was
the complete kit bar the cockpit module and shipped it to Australia along
with my personal goods as I emigrated. On arrival, a detailed invemntory
check showed I was short of cockpit module, complete tailplane kit, flaps,
ailerons and rudder. Europa immediately acknowledged the shortfall and
promised to sort quickly. After much e-mailing, phoning and increasingly
bitter hassle, the missing components finally arrived last week: the
necessary support paperwork - invoicing, parts listings etc. - needed to
help sort out the customs duty and tax shambles the original incomplete
import left me has never arrived. I continue to press Europa, but they are
unresponsive.
Your experience - and that of others who've already replied to your note -
is the same as mine: the problem lies fundamentally with Ray Bedford - who
simply does not provide support to both individual builders and, I suspect,
the local agents or dealers - and Keith Wilson who never answers calls or
e-mails and seems dangerously uncaring about the increasingly bad reputation
this customer treatment is having on their future sales prospects.
Like you, my real fear was that they would go bust before they'd delivered
my missing parts, in which case I'd be left with a very expensive pile of
useless assorted fibreglass bits. They exhibit all the symptoms of a small
company juggling unsuccessfully with cash flow, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I still have mixed feelings about responding to this thread: on the one
hand the aircraft is excellent and I'm a fervent supporter of successful
innovation in aviation and really don't feel comfortablke about hazarding
the fragile nature of business reputations. On the other hand, I know there
is deep discontent within the Aussie Europa builders over company customer
support, and your thread has already shown similar concerns elsewhere, and
I'd feel very bad if nothing had been said and then a new builder came in,
paid his cash, didn't get his parts, and the company went broke. I guess my
hope is that raising the visibility of the problem through this forum may
trigger, at last, some response from Keith Wilson to resolve these problems
(note cautious use of the word "may") and my advice to prospective buyers is
to ask very hard questions about deliveries, guarantees and whatever other
safety precautions you can take before parting with your money.
Keith Hartley
Australian owner of a nearly complete pile of bits
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