Bike has carbon vertical dropouts.

If the bike is upside down and the wheel is inserted in to dropouts the wheel naturally wants to sit closer to the non driveside chainstay. At this point, prior to tightening the Quick release, there appears to be play in the drive side dropout. by putting some pressure on the hub end caps whilst in dropouts, especially the one on the drive side with the "play", you can manually seat the wheel correctly/straight in to the drop outs. QR is then suitablly tightened, all looks good, until i start riding.
Ive only tried using the skewers i got with both wheelsets... plastic stock ones. nothing aftermarket.

Central to the theme of the thread... could the short end caps be responsible for causing the damage in dropout which has lead to the play? Not keen on writing off the wheel set.

thanks again for the replies