One of the only good Great Planes tools I have is there stripe cutter. When I sharpen my own blades I'm able to get some really nice thin strips of covering and do my own pin stripes. Finding covering joints not touching is pretty normal for ARFs no mater what you pay but they are easy to fix and dress up by cutting the covering yourself and over lapping.
I have assembled a lot of ARFs for people and even just using an iron to remove the bubbles and sags in the covering can pull the covering away from the other colors.
Just the nature of the beast so don't give it another though, just clean it up.