This is a lesson I've had before but in the excitement, I forgot. It is ALWAYS worth pay more, sometimes significantly more, for good customer service and the ability to get a good replacement if the product you bought has something wrong with it.
Hopefully we'll remember this in the future.
In the meantime, I need to make a lot of phone calls tomorrow.
I'll talk about it more when it's over.
If I describe the situation to you, you'd call me an idiot, and you should. In hindsight it couldn't have been more obvious.