That's right A&C this is all the more reason to remain on N for as long as one possibly can.
I don't think that the often suspect maintenance standard is in any way limited to G or even to aircraft. It is just the nature of the business and the limited career options within it. Sure my local main BMW dealer does a good job but most car repair shops are russian roulette.
The traditional solution, from an individual's point of view, to a lack of career options is to start your own business or work freelance. I must confess that talk about the details of the various existing and proposed maintenance procedures does my head in and you must understand it far better than I do, but it appears that the general trend in Euro-land is to make it hard or impossible for small businesses, never mind freelance engineers, to operate. This is a very bad thing because these are the very best people around. Like in any other business, with say ISO9000, the moment you give somebody a big company and a QA regime to hide behind, the QA goes down the pan (why? because it can).
It isn't cheaper to be on N-reg (contrary to much disinformation to the contrary) but it is sure as hell easier to find very good people to do the maintenance.