| The tire, not during balancing. They should have used outside grip. The mounting machine can either clamp the outside of the rim (harder to mount tires this way, but avoids damage to the rim) or inside grip which grabs the inner well of the tire by pressing out on it, that usually ends up scratching wheels, and was only done on steel wheels or already crappy wheels that nobody cares for. Usually looks something like this
You can see from that picture you can either grab the wheel from the outside of the rim and it will fit into those angled parts, or put the wheel over top of it and expand those arms to grasp the wheel from the inside (which is probably what happened to you) I'd bet two different people did your wheels, two were done by someone paying attention and two were done by someone who sucks. Balancing only touches the center hub and uses plastic/rubber parts which I've never seen damage a tire in any fashion. I doubt you'll see much more than $250 without spending money to get money, sorry.
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They used inside grip on the tire machine while mounting - 
