The problem with comparing prices like we are doing here is that there are widely differing definitions of "shops". When I ran my weld shop I ran into this all the time and my pricing was compared to my competition often. When I would quote a price sometimes (quite often really) I would be told "I can get that done for x-amount at x's place and you are way too high". Was I too high? Not compared to the other true professional shops in the area but our "competition" was a heck of a lot cheaper and sometimes a customer would leave thinking we were trying to cheat him. I, and the other pro shops, had a lot of overhead such as employee expenses, equipment costs, insurance fees, etc. Our "competition" usually was one or two guys with an old truck and welder whose only expenses were the immediate costs of fuel and material, they had no real shop, no employee expenses, no insurance, little in the way of equipment costs and usually did not even pay any taxes! Add this to the fact they usually made barely enough to pay what little expenses they incurred and it is easy to see why the prices are so far apart. I am not knocking these guys because some of them were hard working people trying to get started and mostly they did decent work but others were just "fly by night" and were not going anywhere. My point is don't knock a shop for their price by comparing it to someone else's price who simply may not play by the rules and who may or may not do a decent job for the price. If you want "backyard" pricing and are willing to chance the quality then fine but don't knock the true professional for trying to make a living, he is not trying to cheat you he simply wants to stay in business and it is not fair to compare him to someone else who is not running a real long-term business and who may be making little to nothing.