fair brake job price??

You should have been charged for either rotors or drums, but not both.

Be glad it wasn't a Mystique. I didn't go for the cheapest parts (put Kevlar pads on) but 4 rotors,

2 rear calipers and a set of pads (all 4 wheels) set me back just over 750 clams at TRADE PRICE. Did all the work myself.

Yes, I could have put cheapy parts on for about 300 or less-(without replacing the questionable calipers) and likely done it again in 2 years. I spent the extra, and the braking is now EXCELLENT - and should last

3-5 years with the driving it gets. Big thing is the rotors should stay straight and smooth.

brakes done by a shop are damn expensive for some reason, $200-$300 per axle seems to be the going price. So assuming you all had them all done sounds about right. Now see how much it costs to do it yourself...

Check it again. Twice he said it was the *rear* brakes. The price sounds a bit high to me, more like a dealer price. I'd like to see a list of parts replaced to see if it included the calipers. And as previously stated, no way it should include both rotors and drums. Since he said pads (and based on research), I'm presuming the rear were disc brakes.

I always do my own brakes - and it's really cheap to do them. I also don't really trust someone else to do them properly. Of course, that is an attitude carried over from riding my motorcycle - which I do all my own work on. If you screw up a brake job on a car, your likely not going to crash, or if you do, your likely not going to die. If you screw up a brake job on a motorcycle your almost certainly going to crash and likely die.

Ted

I always do my own brakes - and it's really cheap to do them. I also don't really trust someone else to do them properly. Of course, that is an attitude carried over from riding my motorcycle - which I do all my own work on. If you screw up a brake job on a car, your likely not going to crash, or if you do, your likely not going to die. If you screw up a brake job on a motorcycle your almost certainly going to crash and likely die.

Ted

Too much info is missing....

I have repair brakes in my "comfort zone".... You will get an excellent repair and I will have no fear of litigation.... The repair will be as financially responsible as it can be. This might be anywhere from a "pad slap" to a "full meal deal".

If you have your brakes repaired at one Ford dealer and a part fails..... any Ford dealer should be able to offer the "service part warranty". Unfortunately, if the failure was due to technique or oversight.......

When it comes down to the price of any auto repair.. you can always find someone that will do it "cheaper".... this doesn't mean "good" and it certainly wont mean "better". You always get another chance to start your car... you never get a second chance to stop it.

If you want cheap (especially when it comes to things regarding safety), you can always find someone that doesn't have the proper business licence, accrediaation or insurance to cover his mistakes... (let alone the common sense or experience to realize that he is making a mistake).

You might have saved some money going with the bargain brand pads.... might have saved a bit more if the tech didn't replace parts he wasn't comfortable with (I wont do a job that I'm not comfortable with)... but you are asking "after the fact"... and I am uncomfortable with that, too.

If you have chosen a good shop with conscientious techs that understand the relationship between a well considered repair and customer finances,/expectations for service life, there should be no question.

The big question... do the brakes perform properly?

I have done brakes on my vehicles for years. I am not convinced of the idea that more expensive pads and rotors are automatically better. My experience has shown otherwise for my vehicles. Sometimes the more expensive ones are better, but sometimes the cheap ones are made just as good. And there are times that the more expensive part is more poorly made, although that is not as common.

The problem is that price on a part is set by a large number of variables, many of which don't directly relate to the material and labor cost of the part. For example, a manufacturer that makes a large quantity can often get better prices on materials and due to economies of scale they spend less money on labor. Shipping also increasingly matters as the further they have to ship a finished part, the more expensive. Also, the fewer middlemen that a part goes through the cheaper it will be - the overhead required to vend a part through a brick and mortar store is far higher than the overhead required to vend the same part through an online website.

And these are just parts costs. Labor costs also have uncontrolled variables. A shop that is in the city likely has higher overhead than a shop out in the tulaberries. A shop with a large waiting room with a TV and such has higher overhead than a shop that has no waiting room. A shop that gets business through a lot of advertising has higher overhead than a shop that gets it's business through word of mouth & the yellow pages. A shop that is on land that the owner of the shop owns outright has less overhead than a shop in a leased building. A shop in a crummy old leased building has lower overhead than a shop in a brand-new tilt-up.

In most markets, shops have to stay within sight of each other in hourly labor costs due to competition. And they have to adhere to book time in most cases. So a shop with higher overhead is going to have to make up the difference by either paying less, or pushing the techs to work faster to complete the job faster than book time, neither of these environments is optimal for a repair.

So, the fact of the matter is that yes, calling around may get you a cheaper price - but it is not always the case that a cheaper price is a lower quality job.

Ted

how many miles were on it? Ford admits the factory pads on some of them are defective, i.e. crap, and replaces them for free.