Well, my LED purchase was resolved amicably. They said they checked other reels from their supplier and they all had similar issues, so they refunded my money for all ten reels. I'll unroll these and light them up, then I can cut out good sections for cars. I should get some decent percentage of usable passenger car sized strips out of them.
I got ten reels from another supplier, and they were fine, at least the three I unrolled and checked, I'm assuming the others are good as they appear to all light at the right color when I test them on the reels.
It took some jawboning, but it all worked out.