Toyota Repair: Door Handle, drive axles, warranty work

Question
Hi, Ted-I have been reading your answers for many years. Thank you!

'92 Corolla-went to open the passenger door, and the handle broke off.  I replaced the driver's one a few years ago, and it was a royal PIA (had to saw off bolts to keep the flimsy metal from twisting, etc.)

Honestly, I don't mind paying somebody to fix this-it ends up being cheaper a lot of times to pay a pro to do it. I am past the age of being under a car prying out drive axles. :-) When you figure in the price of quality parts and tools. . .

The only thing: how do dealers price this sort of unique repair? Straight time? Is there a book time for this?

As I said, I don't mind paying somebody to fix the door, but I worry this could end up being a $500 fix.

My dealer has been pretty fair in the past-should I just ask them? The only thing is that I have never had any "non standard" repair work done.



Thanks

Answer
There is a so called book time(flat rate manual)which mainly used for warranty work but sometimes used as a guide to set dealer pricing, the dealers almost never use book time for customer pay labor, they pretty much set their pricing based on what the other dealers are getting and based on the difficulty of the repair. (Translation: whatever they can get away with)You can usually get a qoute over the phone for needed repairs that are straightforward "how much to replace my outer door handle on a 92 corolla" there is no ambiguity there. Depending on location the dealers are between $80-100 per flat rate hour, to replace your doorhandle I would say 2.0 hours labor is fair, plus the handle, say about $40 so you are looking at about $250 total, maybe less.