Neither I nor Bambu or FedEx will ever know. Given the nature of the damaged rod and lack of any visible external damage it’s hard to say. The rod that is “bent” is in the back where the entire assembly is and you cannot move any part of that with any amount of force (it’s basically one solid piece that is bolted in multiple places to the back panel) it seems to me this is manufacturing damage.
In any case I don’t really care where the damage originated as long as the unit is replaced and I have zero out of pocket costs for them picking up this defective unit.
The damage was visible once I removed the AMS unit so once I saw that I did not proceed further with the unboxing.