Just a gut feeling from what you've mentioned - you probably gotten ripped off. Price is a little on the high side. This is assuming the shop uses a labor rate of around $80-$90/hr (should be posted somewhere easily visible).
Can you post a printout of exactly what they did?
$1700 is pretty high, depending on what they did. Inner tierod runs about $40-$50, outer tie rod runs about double that. Struts run about $70-$80 each (KYB OEM), you didn't mention springs, boots, strut mount, etc. Assuming they did an alignment. Swaybar?? Hard to believe the swaybar is bad, unless they meant the bushings holding the swaybar and the endlinks - then that makes more sense. Also sounds like they gave you zero break on the parts, price-wise, sounds like you paid full retail.
As for the high labor for doing all the struts, suspension/steering work - that is a littler higher than normal. Again, depends on what the shop's labor rate.
Struts are important to the car, but probably not to the point where you have to cash out your savings. You can drive on worn struts for a little while, ride won't be as stable or smooth, but it is still doable.
$50 to reattach a muffler, depends on what was wrong in the first place. Could have been broken bolts to the muffler, needed to weld on a broken hanger, replace a rubber hanger, etc. If it was for all of those together - $50 is not a bad price, for any one of those alone - too much money.
But seeing that you've already done the repair and by your account, the work done was to you satisfaction - not much you can do about at this point, as the money is already gone. What I would do in the future is to shop around, get a couple of price quotes for the repair. Not much you can do about labor charges, but you can shop around for parts.
Use decent online retailers like
www.rockauto.com or
www.1sttoyotaparts.com - you don't have to order from there, just find out what those parts cost, ask the shop for their quotes and see what they are charging.
Also a good idea to ask for your old parts back - an honest shop will have no problems returning your old parts to you. Some parts are required to be returned to a vendor for "core" - so that those parts can be rebuilt, an honest shop will make sure you know about this before they touch the car.
Highly recommend to pickup a Haynes or Chilton repair manual, for reference. A DIYer should have no problems with doing 90% of the maintenance work on the car themselves. The more you know, the less likely you will get ripped off. Know where components are on the car, what parts are called, what they do - and you will understand what they are putting on that work order and quickly determine if they are trying to cheat you.
Myself and many others here opted to do our own springs and struts - there is some work involved but should be well within the reach most DIYers. A beginner with some basic tools and spring compressor - can get this done in 4-6 hours pretty easily - feeling even better for paying for the parts and pocketing all the labor.
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