Harley Benton Electric Guitar Kit DC Style

Put together two of these. On one the holes for the neck joint was terribly misalignet. Holes for pickups, trussrod cover and pickguard also badly aligned on both. Pickguard needed to be filed to fit between pickups on both sets. Pickups are all right, but things get very muddy very quickly when adding gain much past crunch. Tuners are terrible, they stay somewhat in tune but they are so bad tuning is really difficult. One of them even broke. Nut needs to be filed to correct height, it is way too high as is making low chords out of tune. Neck is fine though, decent fret job and the profile is ok. One of the kits had a nick in the body, the other one had a spot of white impurity in the dark fretboard which was very visible. Not the best QC on these it appears. I will need new tuners for both kits to make them worth while playing. Also the nut will be replaced. Will try to replace magnet in the pickups to see if that clears things up before considering full replacement. Electronics are cheap otherwise but work well. Small pots but they seem to be of correct values.

I wasn't expecting much from a £90 guitar kit but I was expecting to be able to make a guitar from the parts. Even if it needed a bit of work, that'd be fine.

However, the 2 important parts are badly manufactured.
The neck pocket has a 1.5mm gap down the side and one of the bridge holes is so badly positioned, it has torn out into the control cavity.

I contacted Thomann hoping they send out either a replacement kit or a replacement body. They initially wanted photos which I sent, then they said I would have to send it back to receive a replacement. I decided to cut my losses and not bother. There was no point paying to return the kit if the replacement was going to be just as bad.

The kit has now just been sitting in the box for the last 3 years.
It's getting to the stage where I might fix all of the problems and try to make it.