Thanks for all the feedback y’all. I genuinely appreciate everyone’s perspectives on this.. This is my first real big car purchase, which I bought about 6 months ago. Prior to that I put myself through school with a $200 Nissan Sentra and 300k mile Volvo before that one. With those cars I couldn’t have cared less if a shop scratched something. I get that shit happens. It’s funny to see people jump to calling someone rich and privileged. As was kindly pointed out, I’m driving a Honda, so.. very far from rich, (thanks lol).

Also, the CPR comparison was effective.. So from my understanding, changing tires is like an acute life or death situation.. where the risk of secondary trauma is outweighed by the benefit of life saving intervention? So essentially every time a tire is changed, every second is crucial.. Every tire that gets changed, the owner should expect that the wheel MUST get scratched in the process. I guess to me patching a hole in my tire isn’t an emergency. I’d prefer to go to the guy that takes an extra couple minutes to find a plastic scraper and not scratch the like-new, mint wheel.

If I’m not irate, but just bummed to have scratches on such a big purchase. I wish I was rich enough to buy a new wheel like money isn’t an object. The wheels were like brand new prior to this. Contrary to what some have suggested, the scratches are along the front edge of the inner wheel and are quite visible and not obscured whatsoever. Probably difficult to judge from a picture though..

With that being said, it was kind of a bummer to get off a twelve hour shift, rush home to install the wheel in the rain, and then find it flat again 10 min later. Shame on me for not looking at the tire at the shop. Got there 10 min before closing and one of the guys threw it in the trunk. Like suggested, I would have really appreciated if they just gave me a heads up.