Don,

this situation sucks for you or anyone. If the Stealership spec'ed this replacement, AND it is a white case duplicate, AND the post size limits how it can be attached, they had darned well replace anything that was damaged. If you had paid the $85 minimum chage to have a tech do the work, I doubt very much if a voltmeter would have been used to check polarity. It would have been a "dang" and give her back to you. If it started. The regulator built into the alternator took a good hit, and shortened the lifetime of those components. Tons of stuff took a whack, and in the near future could start failing.

I just looked at my OEM and it's marked with a 3/8" high red "+" and it would be easy to overlook-especially if you expected it to be a "FACTORY REPLACEMENT".

Start screaming!