> People like to shit on the inspection in general, but I think that mostly comes from shops that embellish problems and try to coerce people into fixing things that they might not need to

It depends on where you are in PA. In some counties the techs are hard asses and nitpick fail you over the stupidest shit not because they want to, but because they're being put under heavy handed pressure by the state police & other gov officials to fail a certain amount of cars per year. They will come into the shop and look at your books periodically and if they think you pass too many cars (even if its because there was nothing wrong with those cars) they'll accuse you of being a lick & stick place and threaten to take away your license to inspect cars.

If the tech is failing you for stupid shit but isn't giving you a quote to fix it, especially if they don't even want you to hire them to fix it, they're not the problem.

I've lived in a few different counties in PA and its like a night & day difference on how hard it is to pass because of this. Also, the counties that are hard asses about inspections also tend to be the counties where state police are the most aggressive at ticketing for expired inspection stickers.