I would give it a shot yourself, You can do much of it yourself and even outsource small time consuming tasks. I had this same problem as you with my website Dates Of Asia and even sourcing other contractors to do this for me my reconsideration request was still denied so after spending the money I decided to do it myself. I found that this approach is much better as you know yourself some of your links that are good links but somebody else might consider them to be bad links.
First off read this post it is what helped me to help myself and ultimately gave me the motivation to do this all myself. Ultimate Guide To Google Penalty Removal
Work your way through this, I found that Link Detox was essential in this. Basically you can export the results to an excel spreadsheet and then pay somebody else to attempt contact of the links you want removed. Keep the spreadsheet updated. Then pay somebody to go through and check each link if it is still there, if it is then add it to the disavow tool. Write up your re-consideration request and include details of what you have done with examples.
It really is not that hard, it is just time consuming but for those long tedious tasks you can just pay somebody else to do those. It is much cheaper than paying $3,000 and I am sure that money will be better spent elsewhere in development or advertising.
Hope I could be of help.
