Classic/Antique Car Repair: Crankshaft pulley replacement, crankshaft pulley, crank pulley

Question
Dear Mr. Sears, thank you for volunteering on this site!

My daughter has a Mercedes 2002 SLK 230 with about 100K on it.     Recently she had some problem steering it and was told by a mechanic (not at the Mercedes dealer but these people work predominanatly on Mercedes)  the belt was broken…
After they replaced the belt on the console, they called her to tell her  they discovered the crankshaft pulley was also broken.    She was informed  it had to be replaced and that it would cost about $1,000.00 (part:$717 and labor $220).     Does that sound OK to you?!  

Thank you very much in advance!

Sincerely,  

Pablo Durissimo

Answer
This car is a bit newer that I usually answer technical questions about. I retired from the trade, tech school auto instructor, the year that this car was built. Now that said Mercedes parts are expensive so the price of the crank pulley would be more that say for a Ford or Chevrolet. According to my reference books a crank pulley for a 1988 Cadillac in 1988 would have cost $200, using that as a base $700 today for a crank pulley on a Benz sounds like it is about right. As to the possibility of the pulley being broken, this could have been the cause of the belt failure. The labor sounds about right for that job.