What was really surprising to me was that the extruder was only rated for 200-500 hours?!

I can't imagine any piece of a printer being normally expected to fail after 10 or so long print jobs. I just broke the 30 day mark on my Max (720 hours) and it's been fully reliable - I certainly don't expect any major maintenance in the near future.
And it costs $175 to replace? That's pretty much the cost of a new RAMBo, imagine if RAMBos failed that often... no way! That's just crazy!