A few months ago all of the Jorgenson and Pony clamps and clamp
accessories disappeared from my local HD. All of the clamps are now
Irwin. Bar clamps, pipe clamp ends and corner clamps, at least.

It has me wondering if HD now has a "deal" with Irwin which may lead to
the products going down in quality. As a first data point, I submit the
following:

There were maybe six blister-packed sets of Irwin pipe clamp "ends" in
the display. The coil spring in the one at the front of the bin had
popped out from whatever is supposed to hold it in position inside the
movable end piece and was just floating around in the package. Although
I wasn't shopping for any of these, I was curious and looked at the
rest. ALL of them had some variation of the same problem.

Now this could be yet another case of HD simply putting defective
returned merchandise back on the shelves (a growing problem), but how
did six of them suffer this problem in the first place?