You guys are setting a great example of MB owners - please take the bickering to PM land and help the original poster understand what is fair.

$800 may be in line if the shop was quoting replacing the calipers, rotors, brake lines and pads & sensors. If NY has high labor rates.

As with any shop when you take your car in they will tell you everything that should be replaced to bring the car up to like new. That doesn't mean you need to accept every recommendation.

Ask the shop to explain what parts they are planning to replace and ask them why they are so expensive.

Lots of shops get the parts from the local parts store & add 10% or 20% for transportation etc. That is OK.

If it were my car - or my wife/daughters car I would make sure it was done right - but I wouldn't want them replacing a bunch of parts that were still servicable.

Now - lets try to keep on topic in the future.

If just swapping out the calipers for $950 dollars as the OP suggested:

As a customer, "fair" would be 2 hours labor and a 20% mark-up on parts.

As a shop owner, "fair" appears to be 4 hours labor and a 100% mark-up on parts.


From what has been recently stated, you'd be lucky to get just the parts for that $800 dollars. Tack on another $500 for labor and that is what a local shop near me would want to do that job. $1300 sound like a fair price to you?

I guess it all depends on how you define "fair" and from who's prospective. As a "shade tree mechanic", using decent quality parts, I could do that job for $400 parts(retail) and 3-4 hrs labor.

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