Skinni - you need to find a shop that won't rip you off. They are ripping you off on replacing the converter in the first place, and they are ripping you off on the price of it.
As Don said: "ANY shop that just replaces a cat without finding out and fixing the cause of the failure is ( trying to think of a nice word for fraud)." if in fact they had failed in the first place.

You say " throws a catalytic converter error" - but later say "I do not get an engine light." - which is it? You need to clarify the situation - and get the actual code that is generating the error.

 

What does "it hasn't been working properly " mean exactly. What happened before it started "not working properly", a frontal collision maybe?

There is no good reason for a cat to fail, unless one of those codes that you don't seem to think matters does. Emissions codes are meant to protect the cat.

Most of those cats should have been covered by the Federal emissions warranty (8 years/80,000 miles). In fact, it was illegal to replace them for a fee during the covered time.

 

Threads merged.