Normally, I handle the maintenance on my vehicles and that includes my 2012 Mazda 5. Unfortunately, I'm dealing with a fairly long term medical issue that prevents me from doing much physical activity, so I'm looking to farm out the job of swapping rear shocks and possibly front struts. The 5er only has 62K on the clock, but the roads in Detroit look like the Marines have shelled them for a month so they tend to be rough on the equipment.

Now, as noted I typically do this sort of thing myself and understand what it takes to install shocks so imagine my surprise when the local Mazda store quoted me $440 to replace the two rear shocks! Apparently I'm in the wrong line of work because the road to riches is through Mazda shock replacement! They wanted another almost $700 to do the struts. I was absolutely floored - the frigging things better be made of titanium with diamond encrusted bolts at that price....

Needless to say, I've eliminated the dealership from any consideration for any service moving forward.