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That seems really really pricey for just a serpentine belt replacement. But, like others have been saying, they're an important piece of equipment so it's best not to gamble on something like that. In the future, make them show you the cracks in the belts before you have them replace it. Ditto for other parts that take wear like brake pads etc...
I do my own belts. If I have my car in the shop and I get a call saying something needs to be done. The first thing I ask is, "how much is it?". If it's pretty expensive I'll go online and see what is involved in doing the repair and call them back notifying them either to do it or not.
Dealer's are notorious for having a high hourly rate. The good thing about the dealer is that they know your car inside and out. I personally... never take my car to the dealer... unless it's a warranty or recall item.
I worked as a service advisor at a Buick dealer many years ago. The big scam was when you went there for some repair, they would look it up in the book to see how many hours it was to take and give you a price. But a good mechanic, who had to take things apart to, for example, change your leaky water pump would also try to get us to up sell you on replacing things that had to be removed anyway to replace the water pump ( belts, for example ). That way, they made additional money for entirely seperate book jobs without having to do any additional work that they wouldn't have had to do anyway. Another big scam at the time on some mid 80's Buicks was "finding" a broken air filter assembly on some models. The mechanics found it was quicker for him to just break the part off to get to something else underneath than it was to disassemble it properly. Almost every customer got a call from us informing them of their broken air cleaner and the vast majority paid extra to replace it at book rates. I finally quit here after a mechanic came up to me at my desk with his hand by his ear, trying to get me to agree that I also heard oil dripping out in the parking lot out of a car he wanted to charge extra for new gaskets. But he had to replace them anyway to do the repair, and the gasket cost and labor was already in the original estimate the customer agreed to. I got in trouble when I questioned him on this and was accused of not being a "team player".
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