CWB Faction Handle

I bought a Faction handle about 7 weeks ago and I have liked it overall, but I have come across two problems.
(1) It sunk from day 1 and never floated
(2) within less than a week I noticed a small nick in the pad of the handle that has stretched out into a 1" tear over the last couple of weeks.

I am extremely careful with the handle, and I don't have any idea when it could have been torn during use.

I was not happy with the sinking thing, but it was not a big deal and I didn;t worry about it, but the tear looked to be getting worse so I called CWB yesterday and basically they said I could pay to ship it to them, they would take a look at it and may replace it. Not bad, but I really don't feel like I should have to pay the bill for a handle that seemed to be a problem right off the bat, i.e., not floating and tearing in less than a couple of weeks. One of the reasons I buy CWB products is that their customer service is supposed to be outstanding. Most of the people I know who have had problems had products exchanged out without blinking an eye. I offered to send pics, to have them ship the handle to me first (they could charge me if they wanted) and I would ship my handle back (and then refund the price), but they suggested I had to ship it to them on my dime. Has something changed? I understand that they just can't take anything, but these are some apparent flaws on a basically new handle that could be easily seen in a picture.

So here are my resulting questions:
(1) Is this a quality product to begin with? Have others had the same problems? I know the $10 to ship is not a huge deal, but if am going to just get another one that sinks/tears easy, I don't want to fork down another $10 each time. If it isn't quality I'll just buy a different brand and move on.
(2) They didn't say, "if what is wrong with your handle is true we will send you a new one", it was more of a send it up here and we will take a look at it...I don't want to spend the time and money shipping it if they are going to just send it back...Any others have experience with their customer service lately?