My father has a Mercedes E 220 and he's having trouble with his car. It is currently in a Mercedes repair shop. This is because when my father was driving home, he had to break quite quickly for a car in front of him. I'm not sure what the situation was but there was no collision or anything similar. He said there was a repeated, quite loud, beeping noise being made when he would drive, indicating a problem. When he left his car at the Mercedes repair garage he was given a temporary car. I believe he received a phone call later that week, or so, from the shop telling him that the circuitry below the middle console was full of coffee gunk. They said that all the cables had to be replaced because coffee had been spilled all over them. They sent pictures of the clearly large coffee spill the circuitry had undergone. Whether or not this was my father's car's circuitry was unclear. They also sent a picture with my father's coffee mug on top of the car, supposedly indicating the two MUST be directly connected. This came as an extreme shock to my father as he has never made such a spill in that car, nor has anyone else. We know this because only 3 people have driven the car and only one of them drinks coffee while driving, to my knowledge. Namely, my father. The cup out of which he has always drunk was a tightly sealed lid type of cup. One that cannot spill more than a drop when someone pushes over the cup and puts it back up again. Even in an extremely unlucky accident, this cup filled to the brim with coffee could never cause the result that was shown in the images sent by the Mercedes garage to my father. Not even if this extreme accident occurred regularly for years, and my father only has the leased car since January of 2016. The costs would amount to approximately 9000 euros in damages. This is a preposterous amount to pay for a reparation that wasn't a result of anything any of the users did. It is borderline (or actual) fraud considering the damage, the impossibility of the situation and the costs. The shop said that the air bags cannot operate safely unless all the wiring is replaced.

My questions are:

Is it possible that only a small portion is replaced to solve the problem?

Are the costs reasonable?

Has this ever happened to anyone else (with an automatic)?

Is it even possible for coffee to reach the wiring in large amounts NOT from any significant spills?

Is there insulation around the console of this automatic car (no shifter in the console), which is where the cup was placed?