Broken Factory seal on new Macbook Pro (revisited)

I just received my new Macbook Pro that I ordered from the Apple Store. I carefully opened the box, which was delivered in pristine condition. When I started removing the clear plastic wrap from the aluminum case, I noticed that the white paper factory seal separated into two pieces without any effort whatsoever. The paper looks thick enough that it should have required some effort to tear it and it would have had ragged edges after doing so. Instead, not only was no effort required, the edges of the two pieces are smooth like it had been cut. The cut line is somewhat below the coarsely perforated line on the label and coincides with one edge of the clear plastic.
I found several threads here and in other Mac forums about the same or a similar situation. I wonder how many more people have had this happen to them. Will Apple make good on this or will they try to just brush it off with some excuse? I certainly have a right to expect a factory sealed new unit when I paid for one. I would hope they'd overnight a new one to me while arranging for a pick-up of this one. This is my first Mac so I don't know exactly how best to proceed. So far I called customer service but the support person, who sounded Indian, transferred me to sales, where I received a recorded message saying to call back on Monday.
I need to resolve this immediately so I would appreciate members' insights based on their own personal experience with this or a similar problem and in dealing with customer service in general.

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Here's another piece of the puzzle. Upon the advice of another thread, I went to the Apple support site (https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do ) to see if this machine had already been registered. Sure enough, when I entered the serial number of this machine, it showed up as already having been "Registered":

Now I'm not entirely sure, because I have never gone through the process, but I am led to believe that there are several steps involved before a serial number shows up as registered. Apple doesn't pre-register a machine prior to shipping do they? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but if this is the case, then clearly this unit has been in someone else's possession and registered by that person, and so is not new. And if that's the case, then there can be no question that I am owed a new replacement immediately.

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