No magic in Honda brakes. Any good shop should be able to handle it, honesty and a fair
price seem to be the main sticking points. My older ones with drum rears never needed
anything for the rears for 250K-350K miles, so he should resist a "rebuild them all" if he is trying to save
bucks, likely nothing happening on the rears without evidence of a leak. See if the shop will let him
purchase replacement front calipers for them to install, if leaking. If so, O'Reilly and other nationwide parts houses
like NAPA usually can provide "lifetime" warranty rebuilt calipers for amazingly low prices. If it is
the master cyl, no experience there recently, but probably the same applies - shops often
make a lot of money on their parts markup and if you can convince them to just do the labor
on parts you provide, there is often a significant savings. Important when money is tight.
I once had a friend's wife call, nearly in tears, that the Chrysler dealer told her that her minivan
was "unsafe to drive, needs a $1200 brake job". I asked if it drove OK to the shop, got a "yes",
so she drove it home. Inspection showed it needed a set of front pads and a new front rotor,
total of about $65 in your hand at O'Reilly, 40 minutes teaching her boys to install the parts.
Beware of "unsafe brakes, needs $1200 overhaul" kind of talk. IME, on my several Accords,
NEVER did anything beyond replace front pads in 250-350K miles. Suspicious of needing more
than that, although it is certainly possible, especially if brake fluid not changed every two years.