You have to be really dumb to release phones like this. This is not the first time HTC has done this. QA obviously sucks at HTC
As a potential HTC One S owner I'll just inject a few words into this thread.
Most of the people complaining and spouting their opinions on QA have no frigging clue about metallurgy or SCM.
I have consulted for companies that design & sell 100k-1M units. There are so many steps in the process until that phone gets to your hands (at a very low price, considering the complexity!), that the mind would boggle - and sometimes it's amazing that anything works at all, ever.
As for the coating process, I doubt that HTC mills the metal or has plasma baths in their offices. All this stuff is outsourced. And in China its hard to ensure that you get what you pay for (or specify) - Ive seen this happen with PCB laminates, components where the BOM says one thing, and a middleman will just ignore it and pocket the difference.
Maybe the base metal was a 3003 alloy instead of a 6100, maybe it was not degreased well enough, maybe some employees handled the edges, perhaps the plasma bath was too cold, or things not given enough time to warm up due to the units/hour presure from the line manager. Moreover, unless you destructively test the devices it's very hard to spot such failures unless you decided that's what you're going to look for.
Of course I would be disappointed when my One S has a chipping issue, but it seems like HTC is being responsible and has quickly acknowledged the issue, without telling the customers "you're holding it wrong"
FWIW I own a HTC Desire, a Nokia N79, SE K750 and lots of old Nokias.