Oh I just realized they meant inner tube and not top tube (I was confused about that while reading it)
Yeah an inner tube for $35? And it's not even those fancy orange ones?
Well it's not hard to change it yourself, as long as they're not charging more than $4 for a basic ones. If they are actually selling it for $35 that's pretty yikes. I'd just buy it online given that it doesn't benefit from retail (you don't need to see a tube in person, just need to know the dimensions)
The bike shop can't compete on price with the biggest online retailers/Amazon. I have my doubts about a tube costing $35. $10 or $15 rather than the $5 you'd get online, but I have been to a lot of bike shops and that 10x markup doesn't comport with anything I've seen. Perhaps the $35 also includes the labor? (Also, it's an inner tube - it's a cheap commodity product, who cares if it's a Chinese no-name brand?)
Bike shops need to charge for labor because most people don't buy bikes from bike shops anymore, so labor is where they make their money. $100/hr for labor is on the higher end but doesn't seem crazy in expensive locations. Not to mention that the prevailing way people treat bike shops (as places you can walk in at any time, get your bike fixed, and walk out) is incredibly antithetical to bike mechanics actually being able to take the uninterrupted time to focus and do good work.
You don't seem to respond to those things.