Complaint Review: Azalea Aviation LLC.

In late May 2022, I contacted Mr. William Clapp at Azalea Aviation, LLC (herein referred to as "Azalea or "he" as its LLC manager) to support the purchase of one of his 120-horsepower Spyder aircraft engines for my Zenith 601 airplane. He originally sold it to a gentleman named Mark in FL in ~2018 but he denid that he sold the unassembled and unused engine to him. But I purcahsed it in April 2022 in CalNevAri, NV for $6,500. 

The condition was that I wouldn't buy the used engine unless Azalea (Mr. Clapp) committed to support the purchase plus sell me a complete firewall forward kit and return the motor here to Arizona with the new paint job. Mr. Clapp wanted to look at the engine first by having me ship it back to Azalea Aviation, LLC in GA engine and shipped it back as requested.

Curiously, no work order was provided but Mr. Clapp emailed me with a cost of $4,200 for the entire 601 FWF kit that I ordered. I assumed quoted cost was for the fee to paint and look over the motor, replace a few parts that he said were de replacing (believe it was a cylinder and connecting rod), plus sell me the firewall forward kit.

After I sent the motor to GA, Azalea began asking for additional payments. The engine remained at Azalea Aviation, LLC for almost 6 months as I continued to ask for status but more than a few words back in texts and emails with very general statements. I asked what the work point and only found out what the costs were when the invoice arrived in Nov 2022. The kit pricing for 2022 with photos of the parts and listed prices (Azalea website pricing as of April 2022). His eventual pricing was not what his website said but was mostly labor against deposits that are made to appear as enough to cover the entire cost of work and without providing the cost estimate & breakdown then allocated it to labor. What I believe happened is that my deposits were used to run the company expenses while my engine sat there (a form of float) while no actual from vendors, and the manifolds were not welded.

I have been attempting to get my remaining parts from Azalea since the engine arrived back to me in minus the intake, exhaust, oil cooler, and carburetor. I have been told by Azalea that they have the parts and "will try to ship in the next few days" or "boxed" (repeatedly) but they did not ship them out to me and didn't answer voicemails and texts. Attached. If my business was a distraction to Azalea Aviation, LLC they could have politely ended the arrangement and refunded the balance, but they never did.

I paid the final invoice plus the shipping of the engine at $2,490 (as additional $500 due to weight) and the previous balance of $3,960 with $5,100 in deposits toward th purchase of a complete firewall forward kit for a total of $7,590.

After a recent call about a leaking pushrod seal, Mr. Clapp said that the manifold parts were at the "shipping facility," but again they were not. Then, after another text to Mr. Clapp, mentioning my intent to file a compaint and provided a UPS tracking number and gave excuses as to why the intake manifold wasn't read me--even though I ordered a specific carburetor from him that he never delivered.

With that, I order style carburetor from an Australian company. He said he would weld the intake that weekend ~3/7/23 execute and did not return my texts. To my surprise, the UPS delivery included scrap / rejected exhaust manifolds (both left and right) as the welds were not performed in a jig and fixture. The intake manifolds were missing.

The bottom line is that I was bilked out of manifold and other aircraft parts need to complete the intallation of the engine plus other mark ups that were not advertized. I then filed a complaint with PayPal and was able to recover $1,000 of the $1,900 I claimed as stolen from me after he failed to respond to the compaint.