Was this an Ebay bargain because it was a scratch and dent? Or was this in supposedly pristine condition before shipping because of it being discontinued or some other reason? The answer to that will have a bearing on your interaction with the seller.

Stainless is very tough and has a "memory" unlike a more malleable material like copper. It's very difficult to fabricate or to "repair", even for experts. Because of that memory, it tends to snap back into place when you try to bend it. I don't know of any metal fabricating shop anywhere that would even attempt this, unless they were a source of specialty restaurant equipment and thus had some experience with stainless and some of the tools needed to try. I don't hold out high hope of making those dents look great, but what have you got to lose by trying?

The item was listed as "new: unused, unopened, undamaged item in its original packaging" and we didn't question further than that (perhaps we should have, in hindsight). We'll have to decide how to proceed, because this would probably be a good deal even on a scratched/dented one.

I'm also waiting to hear back about this from my brother, who is a metalworker himself (lives too far away to help in person on this, unfortunately), but GreenDesigns, your comments confirm my fear about this material being hard to fix.

We plan to use wood counters, so I wonder if it would be possible to route out the counter just a touch in these spots to make the installation level. That's really the issue - the dents are not noticeable without close inspection, so appearance isn't the main concern.

Updating in case another poor soul like myself is out there googling "sink lip dent fix" and getting nowhere:

The dents were DIY-fixable. 18 ga stainless steel is actually pretty malleable. My metalworker brother gave us the following instructions. Use a wood block on each side of the lip, so that you're not banging directly on the sink itself and so that you don't accidentally bang in a dent in the other direction. Use painters' tape on the blocks to ensure that the wood doesn't scratch the surface of the sink. Then gently hammer down the dent from the convex side. Because the lip of our sink has a little curve, we didn't want to fully flatten the metal between our blocks. So we held them on an angle as needed. To perfect the curve of the lip, my brother recommended using a sander to create a wood block with the appropriate angle, and then using a ball pein hammer to bang exactly the right spots into position. He cautioned us to be very gentle and take it slow, because the 18 ga SS will move easily. We did 4-5 blows, not at max strength, then checked, then repeated. We probably did a hundred blows to fix the worst dent, so this takes time, but it worked great. We have a little more work to do on one of the dents, but have completely fixed 2 already.

Here's a before/after of the worst dent we had. The difference in this photo is subtle, but before the fix, it would have been impossible to install the sink flat and level. It's now nearly indistinguishable from the "good" part of the lip, and will be no problem for installation.

So, if anyone else out there encounters this problem, it can be solved!