Here's a story that some of you can probably relate to...
When I was a kid growing up in the early/mid-1990s, I was really into action figures, particularly the ones made by Kenner (anyone remember the "Jurassic Park" figures, in particular) and TrendMasters (now defunct). One of the things that used to seriously irk my much younger self was that I would see TV commercials for those action figures, and they looked really cool, very detailed, and very well put-together. Then I would buy the action figure that I wanted, and I would always be disappointed in the quality compared to the TV commercials - often, the toy that I bought would have assembly issues, the paint would be applied sloppily, and sometimes the enclosed model sculpture looked almost nothing like what was on TV or even on the box photos (this was especially a problem with TrendMasters' "Godzilla" action figures). And this didn't just apply to action figures; it was the same way with fast food that I used to see on TV commercials (the commercial shows a juicy, perfectly-assembled hamburger that made me want to beg my parents to take me to the restaurant, but when I got to the restaurant, I'd always get a sloppy, squashed mess of a burger).
Where am I going with this? Simple: I learned many years ago that any product that you see in advertising is almost always photogenic compared to the one that you actually buy, because no company that mass-produces commodities can achieve QC standards that match what you see in their advertising. And the bigger the company and the more of its products that it manufactures/sells, the more true that this will be. Unfortunately, the gun industry is just like the fast-food industry and the action figure industry. When you see a firearm on a company's web site or its social media profiles, you're probably looking at a gun that was specially built for the advertising materials, with QC, cleaning, and polishing that is meant to make that firearm look perfect and blemish-free when captured on high-resolution cameras. Nowadays, there's also a good chance that the company's advertising folks used digital editing techniques to remove blemishes on the exterior.
So, ask yourself: Are your expectations reasonable? Personally, I don't buy any gun, even an NIB gun from the factory, expecting it to look as clean as it does in the company's Instagram posts or YouTube ads. I especially don't have this expectation for AR-15 manufacturers.