  We examine a recent measurement of the quenching factor (QF) in germanium at
80 K, noticing a number of inconsistencies capable of affecting a claimed
agreement with Lindhard's ion-stopping formalism in the sub-keV nuclear recoil
energy regime. Namely, an underestimated uncertainty in the energy scale and a
missing correction for a large instrumental non-linearity in this scale able to
severely distort the QF behavior at low energy, favoring reduced values. The
discussion is expanded to inspect the impact of QF model selection on a study
of neutrino electromagnetic properties using CE$\nu$NS data that supports a
non-zero electric charge at the 3.5 $\sigma$ level.
