Well, I took the tent in to REI, and they told me that it's normal for the tent to do this. Completely the opposite of what their email support told me, but what can you do. They did offer to give me store credit for the purchase price of the tent, but since the new model is $100 more than what I paid, it would have cost me that much to exchange the tent. I decided to keep it and just deal with the wonkiness.