Yes, or they broke something themselves and replaced it, or fixed a loose cable without realising. There are so many possibilities but trying to get a shop worker to agree that it’s a software bug is going to be tough. My experience with these sort of things is that companies will generally do the opposite - make you do software resets for things that are obviously hardware issues.

It's not out of the realm of possibility but it seems extremely unlikely. Also, the part of the light sensor is not cracked.