most places that do RMA's the workers are supposed to restore it to as close to original condition as possible. But, everywhere I've worked that did repairs, if the customer includes notes, even it was 5 pages we were to read it all and address every issue they bring up.
And I know not everyone has common sense, but when I was at Sony if I got a laptop that had stickers/writing that the customer obviously put themselves I didn't touch it.
But a lot of the people working don't take the time and just breeze thru, that's why you write n HUGE letters of a bright color what not to do. At Sony repairing Laptops, a lot my co-workers if the customer didn't say "don't erase my data" BOOM reload XP/VISTA was the first thing they did, even if it was sent in for a dead optical drive. We'd get a few from Sony execs and there would be "DON'T FORMAT!" written in about 50 places, posts it on the laptop screen "DON'T FORMAT!" haha. companies are quick to do pointless shit to your RMA.
but cleaning perm marker, wow that much have been a bitch.