The confused customer conundrum

A customer called yesterday telling me he needed a reversing switch. I said come on down, I have them in stock. He came on down. But his reversing switch was not the problem.
My first clue, as I started to do the job, was the badly damaged cord which ran to the on/off switch which also had no on/off switch at the end. There were only exposed wires. "Where's your switch?" I naively asked.
"It's gone, Cosgriff."
Sighing heavily, I responded, "I see. Pray, where hath it gone? Towards what destination didst thou last spy it goeth?" Okay, I didn't say that. I said something like, what happened to it?
"It fell out of my hand when I was using it Sunday and hit the handle of the machine, breaking it and shorting my reverse switch."
Uh-huh. So that switch, a switch completely separate and distinct from the forward-reverse switch, broke, and that broke your reverse switch. Yes, Cosgriff.
I set to work opening the reverse switch box, thence finding my second clue. The clamp which secures the cord to the missing on/off switch was bent upwards; the cord itself ran through an open hole unsecured. "Nobody touched this?" I asked, knowing somebody touched it.
"Nope, Cosgriff."
"Because I would not have left this like that," I explained dryly. "Neither would my brother Phil. It would not have come from the factory like this. So we didn't do it."
Ignoring my unassailable logic he replied with a straight face, "Nobody touched it Cosgriff."
I took the cover from the box, removed the reverse switch, and took all the wires off of it. I wired the switch directly to the power cord so that the machine would start as soon as I plugged it in, if the reverse switch was okay. The machine ran. Both directions. "So I don't need a reverse switch, Cosgriff?" the customer asked, with a wide grin and the delight of a child at Christmas.
"Well, no," I kind of sort of chuckled. "But you need a cord for your on/off switch and an on/off switch. You're looking at 90 bucks installed."
"Aw, Cosgriff, you told me 40 bucks on the phone!" he protested.
Calmly yet pointedly I responded, "I told you 40 for a reverse switch installed. That wasn't the problem. You stood right here as I showed you that."
"So I need 90 dollars to fix it?" he queried. Yes, I answered, even though we had just established the fact. I fixed it, he paid me, he left.
I guess my question is, was I the idiot there?