Re: wheel alignment
I've driven my 996 45,000+ miles and never needed an alignment and I drive the crap out of my car. If you need an alignment that soon either (i) you reamed the front end of your car in an extreme way or (ii) your car was f*^ked up when delivered.
As a side note, you should consider getting an allignment when replacing your tires, although I've not found it necessary in my particular case.
Finally, it should take about an hour to do an alignment, tops. So that's $360 an hour. Is your Porsche mechanic really worth $360 an hour? Sounds high. The independent guy I used to go to with my 993 was $190 an hour. That was reasonable and the service was 1000% better than Porsche.