My Gen 3 Prius wasn't too expensive to put right when I accidentally separated some body panels. My brother popped them back together with a dead blow hammer. Good as new. Different story with my Gen 5. I hit the ditch a few weeks back; slipped into the ditch and couldn't back out. The tow truck hooked onto my rear tire, and the expected alignment job was almost $200. But the real damage was the fender liner getting separated off the fender. No popping it back this time; in fact, the system kept shutting down because the proximity sensor in the bumper needed to be recalibrated. I can't use cruise control in that error state. The body shop has quoted me over $900 to repair it.
If you lived near me I'd buy a new fender liner online for $30 and charge you one hour at $48 per hour to install it and in the process I'd get everything bent back into place, even replace fasteners if I have to and figure out how to use Autel to recalibrate proximity sensor. As in less than $100 rather than $900 from a shop that cares more about their boat, RV and house payments than providing an honest price.
So, you own or rent a building, pay taxes, pay payroll, pay payroll taxes, buy nice equipment to make sure you can repair hundreds of vehicle models, carry specialized insurance just in case you make a bad mistake, maintain all the shop equipment and vehicles, etc etc etc. That is not everyone trying to rip off everyone else, that's usually called overhead. You are way too caught up in believing everything is a scam or conspiracy. Sure, there's times abuses happen, but not EVERY time, like you seem to believe. Do you have insurance to cover his wreck if you just happen to forget to tighten some lugnuts? What about if you have his car on a lift and the lift fails and drops his car? What if someone steals the car while on your property? What if a tree falls on it? There's a lot of shyt that can happen and a professional business keeps themselves safe, keeps themselves updated with modern equipment and hopefully keeps themselves up to date on training and development. That stuff doesn't come free. You keep living out of your car or hut or whatever and working under a tree. DIY is great, but don't compare yourself to a professional shop.
"I can't use cruise control in that error state." I assume you mean you can't use adaptive cruise control? I feel like normal CC wouldn't rely on sensors to work.
Once upon a time, bumpers could take, or dispense, a bump. Fenders fended. Proximity sensors had not occurred to anyone.
