It's usually cheese paring by the accountants that results in these little annoyances. Almost certainly that's what led to the fiascos with Beretta quality control a few years ago. I'm amazed anyone's still buying Beretta - but apparently they do.
Brownings aren't so much badly built, but they're certainly not as well finished as they used to be. What the accountants don't get is that lack of attention to these things may save a few pennies in the short term but risks the loss of customers permanently to other brands such as CG who don't expect the customer to do their own finishing off.