Gigabyte z97 motherboard questions

[SidneySmith]

Hey guys, I bought a motherboard a few years ago, about november 2014. It was the z97 black edition that you can find here. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4979#ov Now, at the time, I didn't have the money for the 4790k processor, so I left it sealed, after some time, I kinda forgot about it, it sat untouched on my shelf. Well, I finally got the processor and so I unboxed the motherboard, right off the bat I knew something was off, it was missing the disk that normally has the drivers. I didn't think much of it, and continued the unboxing. I soon found that there was no cover over the cpu socket to protect the pins. At this point, I assume that its a board that they refurbished and sent back out. I didn't mind, until I went to place the cpu, and ran into the actual problem, bent motherboard pins. Obviously I can't ignore this, as it could mean the board is ruined, it wasn't one or two pins, I've got about 2-3 dozen all over the board. Now, the board is still covered under warranty until november this year. I know you can't send in motherboards under warranty for bent motherboard pins, so my question is this: Do you think I could submit a warrant claim because its a used board, I wouldn't think they would be so sloppy as to send that fresh off the site especially with their quality control.