No kidding? Who'd a thunk a BUSINESS would ever do anything profitable like that. Do you bitch at McDonalds because your $3 value meal cost them 50 cents to make?

Take his advise and buy your own clutch, but don't be surprised if it still costs you the same money to have it put in. We do our best to not install customer provided parts because they always expect us to give them the same 15 month/15k mile warranty we put on our parts. In the rare cases that we do install a customer provided part we use a different labor rate to make up the difference.

We also try to avoid working on cars that belong to cheap skates that want to supply their own parts because it's a never ending battle with them. If someone calls up price shopping us we just refer them somewhere else. We've got enough good customers that don't mind paying for good work, good service and quality parts to waste our time on cheap *******s that often can't afford the car they own anyway.

It's the damndest thing, businesses have to make money to keep their doors open to serve you.