A little update- CD did send a separate bill for the return postage-20.00, which had to be sent in via check. In the end, we got a new pad which would have cost us 173 bucks, for 35 in shipping costs. We never received any explanation of why we received our new pad, but, I'll assume our hypothesis of a very small seam leak from a manufacturing defect was correct. The new pad spent a night in the cold tent and like mine, had zero noticeable deflation. Dumb move # 57: I forgot to take the nice, light straps we had made to keep the pads together out of the bottom of the stuff sack before shipping. When my wife asked me about them, I just assumed they'd come back with the repaired pad. Not. Time for another set of straps.