"It should have been perfect out of the box is a ridiculous statement". You won't find a product like this perfect out of the box ever. Not smart things not wink nor iPhone iOS. Everything that runs software has to start somewhere and grows based on updates. I hope you returned all of your product if its that bad.
There's no reason it shouldn't be; plenty of other connected devices work fine out of the box. From a non-technical consumer point of view, if they sell it at Home Depot, it should "just work", whether it's a gas grill or a water heater or a home automation item like a smart bulb. If my water heater pulled this crap on me, it'd go back the very same day. However, I've been into smarthome stuff for a long time & no one (no one with a cheap offering, at least) has cracked the code yet, which is why I'm willing to both try it & be patient.
In addition...they
advertise it that way. "Easy setup" is literally what they market on their webpage. Plus, if you really want to build a smarthome, see the advertising (keeping in mind that most people shopping at Home Depot aren't going to go join a forum & spend hours reading threads about functionality), and go down to Home Depot and spend $5,000 on a full suite of LED lights, smart locks, connected thermostat, wireless smoke alarms, and (expensive) motorized wind treatments, telling that person that (1) Wink's advertising is, in fact, misleading, and (2) Home Depot (who is known for selling pretty reliable products) is selling a product that doesn't live up to its advertisements - well, that is more of a ridiculous statement to me than saying that yes, it should work out of the box as advertised. They're selling it as such!
They've spent millions making products & then filming commercials about how easy it is, but just look at the Gizmodo article: that reflects most of our experiences here (i.e. intermittently buggy). It
should have been perfect out of the gate. It's not like you're buying it from Best Buy as a geek toy to play with; this is literally running things like your front door lock & window opening sensors, which can have
really bad results from a security perspective. Also, I bought the original iPhone when it came out & it was a pretty solid machine - it has had updates & bugs along the way, of course, but out of the box, it was a pretty great device at the time. They made sure things worked right before releasing it to the public. Wink did not. It's as simple as that.
That doesn't mean I'm going to over-react & return my Wink stuff; imo, it's still the best consumer-grade stuff you can buy, short of a more pricey Control4 system. Vera & the current SmartThings stuff don't stack up; you can get pretty good results with a computer-based controller, but that requires more work. INSTEON & X10 aren't bad when you fully tweak them out, but definitely aren't perfect. So I recognize that the field is riddled with inconsistencies, but I also see other connected things like the Nest (standalone), video streaming services, tablets & phones, and other things that are quality products out of the box. So I'm not so enamored with my system that I'm willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that it should have been better than it was out of the box, and that the system should run better than it does today. That's just the reality of where things are at right now.