Ten years ago a bumper was a painted plastic cover. Today it is a housing for parking sensors, a forward radar unit, and often a camera. That is most of the reason the estimate looks higher than you expected.
What is behind the cover
On a lot of vehicles built in the last five years, the front bumper carries the radar that runs adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking. Remove it, put it back, and that radar has to be recalibrated to the manufacturer's procedure. Not reconnected. Recalibrated.
Skip that step and the car drives fine, right up until the day the braking system needed to see something and was aiming three degrees off.
What you are actually paying for
The cover itself is often the cheapest part of the job. The cost sits in the calibration, the sensors if any were damaged, and the paint work to match a cover that leaves the factory unpainted.
We will always walk you through the estimate line by line before we start, so you can see where the money goes rather than just the total at the bottom.