I paid $200 out the door for a new key plus programming..no way around the rip off since there's no way to get the key code without them. IMO, $100 is a deal, $300 is a rip off, I think I paid an average price. I think $80-100 is a fair price for the key blank plus having it cut, another $100 for programming it and sales tax.
In addition, someone sells a copied version of cvag- tacho on ebay, it's a copied chinese version but from what I hear, it works. It could save you $50 .