Question about independent shops - Did I get ripped off?

[tomonomics]

Drewman, apologies if I sounded harsh, but if you read many of the FAQ and posts here from new owners, you would find that ~$3000 repair bill is not at all uncommon if you are not doing your own wrenching on a 986 (you have a 987, so I'm not sure if the same applies, but I assume it probably does). You didn't give us much details in regards to the car you purchased: if you had a PPI before you purchased the car, if the previous owner had already done most of the required maintenance (with receipts), etc. But you should have anticipated that it was a very good possibility that it would be $3000 or $4000 for a shop to bring the car up to current maintenance. Clutch, IMS, brakes, suspension, etc are all on the table for a 12 year old car, even if it only has 50k miles. It all depends on the previous owner(s) and how good they were with maintenance.

Your last post leads me to believe the original estimate included the water pump, etc. so I'm not sure where the additional labor costs came from. As someone else here said, posting the detail of the repair bill would allow us to better gauge if the mechanic just padded the bill.

At the very least, it sounds like you paid less than $12k for a 987 w/~50k miles, so you probably got a good deal assuming it was at least minimally maintained. But again, based on what you've told us, if your budget was a tight $14k, you likely bought the wrong car. Just my .02 - I wish you well and hope you can keep it.

[Giller]

I just took my car in to get the bumper resprayed (old owner sure liked driving on gravel roads!) - quote was $1000. Good quality shop, do good work, worth it. But when they took the bumper off, they discovered some serious issues with the rebar - clear indication the car had been in a bit of an accident. So my $1000 bill is now up to about $2000.

My point - cars cost money and sometimes you don't know what it's going to cost until you get right in there. That's why it's called an 'estimate'.

Until you post an itemized bill, we have no idea whether it's you or the repair shop that's out to lunch. Post it up and let the experts dissect it. JP is always a good resource for this sort of thing.