find simple things like undercarriages not lubricated and door catches smeared in grease to give the impression some work as been done.
Certified aircraft maintenance is a captive market with little real competition as the maintenance regime militates against swapping maintenance organisations and the private owner has little leverage to negotiate prices. So they can charge what they like and few owners are sufficiently knowledgeable to police the work they do (or often don't do).
The ethos in the Permit world is quite different. More owners do some maintenance and the relationship with the LAA engineer is far more personal and works on a huge degree of trust. Because the engineer is not supporting huge overheads the cost is so much less and of course parts without the paper trail cost a lot less.
The LSA process is something of a half way house with cheaper maintenance but still sufficiently regulated that it will permit the use of certified LSA for training (or so I understand, as the regulations are not yet in force).
This seems the way forward for much flight training. I think the risk is that as organisations invest in new fleets the capacity to do IMCR training
will disappear. With the current uncertainties over the continued existance of the IMCR, who would base their purchasing decisions on the need or the wish to do IMC training? The problem for the FTOs is that they will have to either go the conventional certified aircraft route if they think they
might want to train for the IMCR or make a business decision to abandon that area with all its uncertainties in favour of much cheaper operating costs for mainstream flight training using LSAs. I suspect that training organisations operating certified aircraft will become few and be those offering specialist training such as aeros or formation flying.