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Completely untrue - that you have to do it yourself or "pay the man". I have lived in several cities and have always found a good shop that would install parts that I buy, and recall no difficulty in finding such a shop. And again what I have found is that these have been great, honest shops. They are shops that mark up their parts prices very reasonably and are not traumatized by the thought of losing the profit margin on a parts sale, especially when it's so easy and efficient to just take the part out of the trunk. Standard labor hours estimates generally include time for both diagnostics and parts procurement.
There is actually an antitrust concept here - tying. When a monopolist forces its customer to buy one product in order to gain access to another it's known as tying and it's quite unlawful. I'm not suggesting that every shop that ties parts and labor is going to get prosecuted (although once they get your car taken apart they are effectively a monopolist) but it is a practice that surpresses price competition on parts and anything that surpresses competition in our economic system is a bad thing. And by the way you can call them an asshole behind their backs too.
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