I've recounted before a colleague ending up scrapping her modest Renault hatch back because a wiper motor failed. To be fair the part itself was a perfectly reasonable fifty quid or whatever but the labour required was over £1500 as half the car had to come apart to get at it. I later wondered if they could have more simply cut a hatch somewhere and mig'd a patch on it afterwards since it didn't have to look pristine given the alternative was scrappage
There's something similar doing the rounds in the VW van world.
The motor that controls the heater settings can fail. Officially, the entire dash has to come out and the labour is also about £1500 odd.
Independents go by the "book" time, so while their hourly rate is lower it's still a lot of hours and typically still a grand or more.
Keen DIYers have looked at the problem and discovered that only part of the lower dash needs to be removed, so the job can be actually done at home in less than 2 hours.
One guy has twigged it's quicker still to remove the drivers seat (4 bolts) and lay on your back looking up under the dash, making it less than an hour.
But VW dealers want to charge for removing the entire dash because that's the approved factory method from which the book time is derived.
We can be fairly certain someone with some nouse could have fixed that Renfault for a lot, lot less than £1500.