Originally Posted by
gmt13
Your experience was ridiculous. How do you break an axle trying to straighten it?
It's pretty simple: unbending a bent steel axle by any means involves a risk that it will break instead of bending back.
Another shop I was told about wanted to charge $30 to chase the pedal threads...
Out of curiosity, are your pedals French-threaded? If they are, then re-tapping them to 9/16" x 20 is certainly worth a $30 labor charge, it's not a quick-&-dirty thread chase job.
Putting a nutted axle on when the bike that came in had a QR is not acceptable.
Perhaps they thought it would be more resistant to bending, and from the sounds of it, the OP bought this bike more for transportation than as a vintage jewel, so they may have made a judgement call (right or wrong) that function was more important than preserving it in vintage condition.