The Price of Ignorance

I brought my car in for service today…

60,000 mile service is $420. Plus I get synthetic oil, which costs like $50 more.

They just called me, saying the drive belt needs replacing, for $120, and there’s oil in some intake someplace, which needs to be taken apart and cleaned, for $192.

So I’m looking at around $800, of essentially voluntary work (nothing was actually *broken*).

Sigh.

Guess that’s the price for not taking the time to understand the mechanisms myself, to be able to do my own maintenance or at least dispute excessive charges.

— update —

Yep, bill came to $800. Of which, $650 was listed as “labor”…

Maybe next time I’ll compare prices with the place just down the way from Staples…