Hi Rmf, we apologize that you found one of the caps that were included with your newel to be defective and unusable. It caused you extra time and effort to get it to work, and that's unacceptable to us. Your advice to inspect packaging and contents is wise, so thank you for offering that up to the community. We're happy that it worked out in the end, just know that your comments have been forwarded to our Manufacturing team for their review. Thank you.