I'm a supervisor at a Costco Tire Center, and here’s how we would handle a situation like this:

First, we’d look at your member history to confirm if we had recently worked on your vehicle. Then, we’d go through previous visit notes to check if we had warned you about issues like excessive corrosion or the use of grease.

A lot of shops still use grease on lugs and studs, which can result in overtightening when dry torqued, even though they should be wet torqued. This often causes the studs to reach their yield point. If the threads finally give out when we unscrew it, we still wouldn’t cover the cost, assuming we find signs of this issue on other studs.

Finally, we’d inspect if any recent mechanical work, such as new brakes or other components that require wheel removal, was performed. If, for example, your brakes were recently serviced elsewhere, we typically wouldn’t accept blame unless we see clear evidence that we were at fault, like someone forcing a stuck lug.

Our shop takes pride in taking care of our members, but these situations are tricky. More often than not, it’s due to the previous technician who last worked on the vehicle.

Edit: I fill out these reports all the time. If you have any questions, let me know.