Opinion: NB Headlight bucket is broken at the garage but they said it was broken alr!

[whereisjim]

Hi guys.

I have 2001 New Beetle 2.0 GLS.
The milage is around 49k and never had any milage maintance. I know I'm bad. At least changed oil regulary.
I had to do emission inspection and faild. I had to take the beetle to the garage so I decide to do the 50k mile maintance at the same time.

Before I drop the car, I asked the guy at the front desk how much it will cost to replace the light bulb and he said $60 for labor + part. My headlight buib is dead on passenger side. I changed driver side around 4 month ago by myself.
I figure $60 is too much so I told him that don't worry about the headlight, I will do it by my self.

1st question. back to the shop to pick up. He is telling me that they just check the headlight part but the bucket is broken so I might have to replace the bucket if I want to change the headlight.
I do checked that thing this morning and it was fine. He just tried to check the headlight but the thing was broken already so he couldn't do anything.
Please see these pictures that I took after I got back home.




I know it breaks well but...
Do you think it was broken already?
He goes "We don't advertise, we do get customer by refferal. We do tell customer that if we broke something and fix it for them."
Am I too much? Should I just believe what they are telling me?
I briefly checked this morning but I think it was fine this morning.

Another one:
Also asked him does your maintance check have all the work items that manufactures recommands? and he answered yes.
The receipt doesn't have anything about air filter. So I asked him "Hey did you replace the air filter?"
and he said "Oh we checked the air filter and it looked clean or changed so we didn't do anything."
As I said only thing I maintained is Oil change. He said "the filter condition can be differ by driving habbit or where and can be whole different reason. The filter looked fine and you should be fine.

So here's the question. I drove almost 50k now. If the filter look ok, do I just keep it or have to change it?

Thank for reading guys!!
I'm not a mechanic. Once I tried to change oil by myself but had to gave up cause I couldn't pull out the old oil filter from my beetle. (excuse: I know I don't have proper tool ).

Please tell me whatever you think!!!
TIA!!

[LadybugEwa]

That bracket part is not the best piece of German engineering. Far from it. When my boyfirend changed the light bulb in my NB for the first time he broke it. I went to the dealer and got a new part for him to put on. The service manager told me that they always keep a bunch of them in stock, because they break them all the time when changing light bulbs. The vulnerability of this design is in the grit that gets between the moving bits and "cements" them eventually. I think it's very likely that the mechanic broke the part. It's very strange, though, that they wouldn't admit to it, since it's such a cheap part ($20 CDN if I remember correctly).
About the air filter, do you mean the cabin air filter? I am VERY surprised they said it was clean. When I changed mine, it had UNBELIEVABLE stuff in it. My guess is that they didn't find your air filter at all! The location is a little eccentric, since you have to dissasemble most of the dash to get to it. I would check up on these guys you're using...