I had to do a rear driver door, which is pretty straight forward and doesn't even require removing the door card or getting into the door very much. I can't confirm if the front is as straight forward, but I wouldn't expect it to be very different. Because it was in the rear, I just snipped the wires in the front of the handle that supply power to the comfort access touch pad and reconnected everything so that the pigtail didn't get lost down into the door. Voila, drain problem solved. It certainly wasn't $450 of labor IMHO. There's some pretty good videos on YouTube about it.

To save some cash I dealt with the minor inconvenience for a few months. I put a search on eBay for comfort access door handles and snagged one for $127ish when one in the right paint code became available.