I would say that you were lucky they even let you open it up in the store. If you buy from a big mail order like Tower, you get what they send you like the Stearman I got that took 5 hrs to fix all the wrinkles in the covering[:@] and then if you want to return you have to pay shipping to send it back and maybe pay a restocking fee, so you fix it yourself. Get used to it, this is the way some companies do business. I work for Home Depot and we take back anything you don't like, even when we know you broke it. But thats why people shop us, "the customer is always right" The hobby shop just did not want to have to deal with sending back a return and now you will go else where to buy(I hope) and he lost a customer for life. Manufacturers find it cheaper to send you parts or make you do all the work to send it back to them, when it should have never left the plant to begin with. Hope the paint was all that was wrong.