How about adding a poll about whether you had pucks left in. If the puckers are in the minority then it would seem that just having the pucks in for transport is wrecking the bearings.
If that is the case (and I'm not saying, at this point, that it isn't) that would seem to be quite serious...
I must say though, that the transport pucks should not be causing this - many cars of all sorts of makes are shipped with these in place and suffer no issues - I know that my Honda old S2000 had them for transportation because there was a similar scandal on S2KI with some dealers forgetting to remove them at PDI.
The bearing works in a different plane to the springs. The bearing is there to support rotation of the strut without twisting the spring, the pucks are there to prevent/limit compression of the suspension in transit. You would expect that the pucks would be more gentle on the suspension than general driving i.e. the loads on the bearing would be much greater in general driving than in transportation...
Poll