My last front axles brake job cost me only ~$18. Two amazon warehouse Bendix Premium rotors $8 each, and free (lifetime warranty replacement) Autozone Duralast Gold pads. Maybe a buck or two more from tax plus adding on the combined cost of a little brake clean, grease, and a pair of nitrile gloves....
Plus $1000 worth of tools once you count everything from the jack to the air compressor, but tools get reused countless times. I can appreciate that not everyone wants to make the tool investment. Even so, let's suppose I paid full retail for the pads and rotors, then it'd be roughly $110, and a (typical) shop wouldn't have taken as much care to derust and lube contact areas, would probably only spend an hour doing the work, so let's call that $150 labor, be generous and throw in $5 worth of shop supplies when we know it's more like $1, and the total comes to $265. Let's call them jackarses that print the receipt on gold leaf and charge a parking fee and round it up to $300.
That's it, $300 is the max I'd spend on someone else doing the same job EXCEPT IN MY CASE, the really ironic part is, I'd rather pay the $18 I did and DIY rather than have them do it for FREE because:
- Call shop, schedule an appointment
- Mark on my calendar and have to remember and take time off to get it done.
- Drive the vehicle there, and if they can't get it done while I wait, then have to have 2nd vehicle/driver to get home, and 2nd vehicle/driver to get back to shop later to pick it up. Maybe if you go to some high class shop they give you a loaner vehicle but let's face it, that isn't really free, your bill will reflect that however they pad it to make up for that cost to them.
- Either way, wait at the shop while they repair it or go home and come back, then still have to drive home after the repair, more time spent.
- Nobody is going to take better care of your vehicle than you are. I guarantee the $300 brake job wouldn't have derusted and greased all the contact areas that I would have, do the extent I do, and yet, my doing it well, takes up less of my time than the 4 lines above, probably less than 1/3rd the time, AND if I DIY, I know if something else is bad and needs replaced or whether they are just feeding me nonsense trying to make more profit.
$1000+ on a brake job that's 3X more burden than DIY? Does not compute. Shops are preying on ignorance and unfortunately that's how society is set up, that the contract to do the work is whatever you agree to, but what you agree to has a lot to do with how much Prior Planning. We can't all DIY everything, sooner or later anyone has to pay a pretty penny for someone else to do some work for them even if some other area of life other than automotive. I appreciate that the most when it saves time, but not so much when taking your vehicle to have brakes done, may cost you more time than DIY.