They agreed to inspect according to their procedure. That is implied in accepting their client's PO to perform the inspection, whether explicitly stated or not. If they tendered a report at all, whatever the conclusion, they strongly implied they had followed the procedure agreed upon. The procedure was agreed upon when bozaktwo1's company gave them a PO requesting inspection to whatever standard was named, since procedures necessarily name the criteria to inspect to, i.e. ASME, AWS, MilSpec, etc. Procedures also usually require adherence to industry accepted standards - ASTM E709 in the case of MT. E709 does have some things to say about cleanliness of material to be inspected I believe.
We do not understand what the contractual arrangement was in detail, no. But at the minimum it had to include the client's offer to pay for inspection and contractors acceptance of that offer. Strongly implied is the contractor's expertise in performing said inspections, otherwise why not contract with Joe's Bar and Grill to perform the inspection? Such expertise would usually be presumed to understand the procedure they themselves generated and to abide by it in execution of a contractual relationship, which is why the report was unethical, assuming they willfully violated their own procedure. Any report pretending to be based upon a procedure that was not followed is a fraud when the procedure was willfully not followed. If it was done though sloppiness and lack of attention to detail, its not so clear that there was an intent to defraud, but it is clear that the NDE contractor did not render a report based upon their published procedure, IOW a substandard product accompanied by the claim (Yes, by forwarding a report that such and such was inspected to whatever standards, they are claiming it was. I would bet there is such language on their report. I don't accept reports, personally, that don't lay out standards for method and acceptance and I don't know anybody in the Oil and Gas Industry that would.) that it was correctly done. From the information we do have the report is palpably false. Therefore upon notification of the fact, the contractor should refund whatever fee they charged at a minimum to remain ethically correct in this matter.
Obviously, based on the above, I can not agree with the view that there is not enough information to draw an actionable conclusion. If they were unwilling to clean the parts, they should have returned them or negotiated a fee for cleaning. To inspect them, violating their own procedure, and submit the results as properly done inspection, that just doesn't wash. You're welcome to your view of course, but as a guy that spends my company's money on outside NDE, a vendor that performed the same way for me would be off the vendor list.
I have to go back to my original post. The original poster should have reviewed the NDE labs procedure. It would be very easy to prove they did not follow their procedure. I guess instead of assuming, I should ask.
Do you have their procedure? Did you review it? Is it obvious they did not follow the procedure that you reviewed? There is your case against them, if you answer yes to all these.
Jim