First I must apolagise for the 'tone' of my post, I normaly try to be cival on forums, but must have had a bad day, I'm only normaly that rude face to face(so I'm told)
Are you saying that the caps where not screwed on when you received it? that would make the 'damaged thread in transit' more believably, but still unlikly.
But I still don't understand why you refuse to have the scope repaired or replaced, I believe many people take a while to fully get to grips with this scope, so I would advise you perseviring. If you had cardboard 'packing' in box it may be a different batch than mine, which has the foam packing, I have no reservations about the quality of materials that my scope is made from, and if it had a problem I would be sending it back, I certainly wouldn't push a £250 scope to back of cabinet as a leason learnt.