Transmission Question

My Brother-in-law has a 1999 Impreza 2.2 L non Turbo 5 speed with 108,000 Kms and the transmission is gone in it.
Well I shouldn't say gone but, it's going to cost $1500 to fix. Clutch Rear Main bearing, 3-4th Synchro, and all other gears need to be replaced.

My question is, is this normal? My wife had a 2000 same car but, in an Auto with 64000 KMs and we never had these kinda problems. My finger points to driving style but, I thought I'd lay it out here and see if you guys had heard of anything like this.

Feel for the guy $1500 isn't chump change to get your car back to running order....

No, that's certainly not normal.

Was this a sudden failure? Or did something get loose in there and have time to cause some real damage?

Maybe keep an eye out for an RS owner that's upgraded their trans, and get the take-off for cheap.

Apparently it had been making this noise for the last 4000 KMs but, the tech didn't think it was all that important at that time so maybe he can go to do the dealer for that?

Yeah, that's probably bad. ~3000 miles with a mystery noise in that trans? I'm sure it's well out of warranty, too...

WTF kind of tech said not to worry about it?! I'd be pissed.