Ouch! That sounds pretty shady. Call and get a quote from Advance on that thing. Either that, or buy a used one from a salvage yard for like $50-75. You need to spend some time shopping around.

Seriously... these things usually either work forever, or about 100k miles. I put 400,000 miles on an import (Toyota 22R). The first starter went bad around 70k, I put a used $75 starter on mine that had 130k on it, and it went the rest of those 400,000 miles.

You may be able to save about $200 on your problem by calling the right places. Grab your yellow pages, man.