Unfortunately, I think we are bound to see more and more of this from all of the major tool manufacturers. With the degree of automation required to make hand tools profitably in the US, some of these tools are probably in the package without ever coming into contact with an actual human. Combine that with the unskilled labor at the online megamart and you have a recipe for more defective tools finding their way to the end user. I am not offering any excuses for poor quality control. I am only saying that this just may be a sad fact of life. I remember having a conversation ten years ago with my Matco dealer about defective tools and tools in the wrong packages etc that made it past quality control to his truck. We had a good laugh about the Craftsman pro 9/16" combination wrench that came instead of a 14 mm in a metric set of S-K polished wrenches among other bloopers. The difference was he discovered many of the problems before they reached the customer and the rest were almost always found and fixed before the truck left the parking lot.
Ain't that the truth...
I recently purchased two sets of Craftsman wrenches - a 43pc 12pt combo wrench set and a 28pc 6pt combo wrench set.
The 32mm 12pt had the chrome finish coming off in gigantic flakes, and the stamping on the head was not centered like on every other Craftsman wrench, but was far to the right.
The 3/8 6pt was bent.
Other than those two, the stuff was great, but it was just annoying to get the stuff from sears.com and discover flaws like that.
Of course, my local store immediately exchanged them, no questions asked, so I don't have "broken" tools, but yeah, automation certainly has it's downside.