This is all incredibly helpful everyone, thank you.

I’m definitely taking it back to the shop. The most important thing to understand was whether this could be an innocent problem or if it was definitely a case of didn’t-replace-the-cable.

Sounds like there isn’t enough evidence to conclude bad intent, which is the outcome I was hoping for. I’m also glad to hear I can’t conclude he stripped the bolt. More likely I screwed it up at some point and the additional wrenching at the shop didn’t help.

Amazingly this isn’t the first time I got a bike back with poor indexing. Scarily, it’s still probably the best shop in the area. It’s why I’m learning to do more and more of my own work, and will probably be hanging out here a lot.

I really appreciate it again everyone!