The price that this mechanic charged is a fair charge, but......... if you know how to do any job yourself, the high cost that someone else pays can appear outlandish. Also..... When I pay my trusted local independant mechanic to do work for me I always reduce the cost of the job tremendously by doing a sometimes exhaustive but usually cursary on line search and buy the parts much cheaper than the mechanic gets them for. He then just charges me labor. A mechanic has his suppliers that he goes through and he pays what they charge for parts and then marks them up in price to you. He can't be expected to take a couple of hours searching for the lowest cost on parts for each job. But if you search yourself you will most often find the same part, often by the same maker varying in price IE: from $57 to $300 for the same part and many places ship free for orders over $50. My mechanic is happy because it saves him the trouble of running down the parts. Of course I always make sure that I order the correct parts and I get everything that he needs for a job. Anyway Connie, I don't think that this guy meant to offend either you or your mechanic, I think that he was just shocked at the cost because he could evision a different path to take.