I agree with you, Ed. I was only trying to describe what casual discussion might attempt to dispense-with as far as actual work accomplished. In the strictest definition this work would all have to be done under the direct supervision of the IA unless the owner was also a certificated A&P. That would imply that the IA was either devoting similar time to the job.... or the job was being performed at the IA's place of business ...if the owner was not certificated. Both those scenarios take real time out of an IA's day.
If an IA is comfortable with a non-certificated owner's servicing activities in the owners own hangar....and the IA merely drops by for a look-see and sign-off... well, that's a different matter. But unless the owner's hangar is located AT the same airport... then the IA can easily still lose several hours even if minimally involved.
It's just an easy, if inadvertent segue' that owners sometimes make, in believing that some guy who didn't actually get dirty, bust a knuckle, and twist a wrench doesn't earn his fee.
Of course, as owners, we all get to choose where we do business, but just how easy is it to find another IA who will happen to agree with the owner who thinks the IA's time is not worth much?
Addendum: I'm reminded of the time I asked an A&P/IA buddy to go look at an airplane with me which was undergoing an annual inspection. I only wanted a second set of eyes to confirm what I already thought I knew about N146YS when I bought it.
I picked Joe up at his house and drove 3 hours to the location where the annual inspection was being performed. It was a fun drive with us drinking coffee and viewing the countryside. We arrived and saw the airplane all torn apart, and took the logbooks to lunch, then returned to the airplane and Joe peeked and pried and looked and asked questions of the IA in-charge... Then Joe and I got back in my car and drove back home.
We arrived at Joe's driveway and I asked him how much I owed him. He said something like "I didn't do much and you bought lunch...."
I asked him how much he charged when he worked on customer's airplanes at the airport shop. (He normally worked as A&P for his bro-in-law) and Joe replied $15/hr. I noted that we'd been gone for 10 hours and asked him how $150 sounded, and he said "Fine, but it's too much".
I wrote the check for double that and felt very good about the incredible depth of experience Joe contributed to the day.
(Joe had been a WW-2 Army Air Corp mechanic at training bases, then did another 2 years in the Navy maintaining Martin and Consolidated PBY's as well as PBY-4s in the So. Pacific. How did an Army mechanic become a Navy mechanic?
He was court martialed because of a fight he had with an Ensign and his punishment was 2 years in prison.
He had been sent overseas to accomplish an extra-ordinary repair on a General's airplane (because they knew of his good talent and the General wanted the best) and when he returned to the US on a ship he had been awake for 45 hours. He fell into a convenient bunk at the Navy base at which he'd arrived and in the middle of his nap an Ensign came busting into the barrack and kicked his bed demanding to know why he was sleeping in the middle of the day.
So, in Joe's own words, ..." Half asleep....I picked him up and threw him out through an open window beside the bunk."
I said, and THAT got you court-martialed?", I asked?
"It was a third story window.", he said.
His 2 years in a military prison lasted 24 hours... until a good friend of his, an officer in the Navy who knew Joe's work from their high-school days, saw the report and asked Joe if he'd rather sit in jail or work on airplanes, and with Joe's grateful response, had the prison time transferred to a So. Pacific aircraft maintenance depot.
When Joe finished his 2 years in the Navy, he returned to San Diego and, as happenchance would have it, his discharge papers were being handed to him by the same ensign (now a Captain) he'd formerly thrown out the window. The captain dressed Joe down for wearing an outdated uniform (the Navy had just changed from brown to whites and since Joe was overseas and just-returned he hadn't yet been issued the new uniform, seeing as how he was being discharged.)
I understand there were a few choice words exchanged but Joe was now a civilian and he pretty much said whatever he felt. He walked over behind the captain's desk and slid the window open... and the captain handed Joe his discharge papers.
I believe he told it exactly as it happened because Joe was actually a very quiet fellow, not known for exaggeration.
In my opinion, Joe Tomme was an incredible asset to my aircraft mx tasks for the next ten years. We lost Joe two years ago, half blind due to stroke and old age. (The last years of his life he could only see the right-half out of each eye due to that stroke.) The last thing he did was rebuild my magnetos on a desk in the nursing home.
Joe was always underpaid.