Car repairs

I bought a car at the end of January, and I love it. It's a 2002 Toyota Corolla, and only had 100K miles when I bought it. Since then, I've already put almost 5,000 miles on it, but being 30 miles away from both work and Riverview will cause those miles to rack up pretty quickly. It runs and drives so much better than my previous car (96 Honda Civic) - however, that car did have 265,000 miles on it.

There is one issue - about a week after I bought the car, the Check Engine light went on. I just thought it was because I didn't screw on the gas cap tight enough, but after having Autozone look up the error code, they mentioned it was something wrong with the catalytic converter. Crap. I knew that part was pretty expensive, due to the fact that criminals like to steal them and sell them on the black market (see this article).

Today I called the dealership to see how much the part cost.  The person on the other end, to his own shock, told me it was $1387.  Ouch.

So I called a few places that my co-workers recommended.  One of the places quoted me $200 plus tax.  That was final cost, including parts and labor.  Wow!  They also told me that there's probably something else going on that caused my catalytic converter to go bad, and that I needed to get a "fuel pressure check"first.  They didn't have to tell me this.  

Moral of the story - unless you are rich and like supporting big corporations, DO NOT get your car repaired at the dealer, unless it is for warranty/recall repairs (in that case, it won't cost you anything).  It doesn't matter what car you have.  Support your honest, local repair shop.