Originally Posted by
La Brea Bike
So... I'm going to stick to the China fingerpointing, I'm guessing I personally see ~8,000 unique bikes per year on average. Teeth of this shape are a first I have seen in four years of this volume. Oh; and I am a former Quality Manager for a car company. I'm sure you are an expert, but I doubt this met the contract specs.
No matter where or whom manufactured it, it's the person or entity selling the product that really bears the responsibility for this kind of stuff. IMO. If they have no quality control standards that they told the mfr they wanted to go by, or don't do their own Q&A to find this stuff before they sell it to you, then they are more wrong. And likely they do no quality control. Nor have they even specified to the manufacturer what was acceptable or unacceptable.
China and many Asian countries can do really good precision manufacturing or they can do really bad manufacturing. It seems that something about their thinking allows them to use exactly the amount of product quality control that is specified by the importer or re-seller of the products.