[thstone]

In my humble opinion, the shop gave you the "easy" and "safe" estimate" which is basically to replace everything regardless of what component failed.

My problem with this approach is that any of us here on the Forum could have easily provided the same estimate without ever having seen or inspected your car (just replace everything!).

Anyone (even an idiot like me) can throw parts at a problem - or in this case, throw all of the parts at the problem at once! So it peeves me when shops do this.

A big part of why you pay a shop $100/hour labor is because we assume that they have the experience and expertise to NOT have to throw parts at a problem. They are assumed to know how to properly diagnose and find the exact issue and recommend only the needed parts and labor. If they can't do that, then they shouldn't be charging $100/hr.

Now, I understand that the shop may have to spend some time to get to an exact diagnosis; if they can do this for free, that's great. If not, they have the responsibility to inform the customer that its going to cost $XXX for diagnosis up front. But in the end, they have a responsibility to provide a firm diagnosis and not just recommend replacing everything.

With this being said, I would find a different shop who will investigate the problem and provide a meaningful diagnosis and estimate of the repairs.