Originally Posted By: Vikas
I have never opened the hood of the car that OP is driving, so I am in no position to know how long *should* it take. But the reality is that 15 minutes vs 2.5 hours are not within "reasonable" range of each other. If both the belts had auto-tensionesr, then it really would have been trivial to replace the belts. Needing to remove motor mount puts it in completely different category though.
For all we know, the shop might have charged OP lot less than the actual time it took for the mechanic as OP was a friend with the shop.
Whether shop should allow customer to bring their own parts or not is a whole different discussion. I see both sides of the argument.
You can have a job that is *supposed* to take 2 hours take 45 min on one day, and 3 hr on another. Those numbers are not even close to being in the same range either. And I know this is possible because I've done this particular job 4-5 times, and I've had it happen to me.
Point is, any particular job has its challenges. Depending on the individual vehicle, your luck, and who's doing it, it may take drastically longer (or shorter) than it is supposed to. I think that an individual vehicle owner should be charged a reasonable "average time" for the job, and usually the book time is the right number.