Was it damaged at all? I would suggest sending it back. In the future, don't accept packages from UPS that show obvious signs of mistreatment. Although I'm not really sure how to do this if they just leave it on your front porch.
On the side note - a new initial setup was released today for Pop that may have fixed your account creation issue. I am sorry if you ran into problems with Pop.
Good to know. I haven't decided if I'd prefer going vanilla Ubuntu. I'm going to give Pop some more time yet. I can see benefits; I'm just not sure they're for me.
Side note: PopOS wasn't ready for release. I had lots of problems getting the initial account created and on corporate wifi (PEAP).