I took the part off and gave it a close look. There's no dramatic carnage to see, really nothing to see at all. The ball is tight in the plastic socket and it requires a healthy amount of force to make the socket articulate. The problem is that the plastic socket was not crimped tightly enough in the tie rod end metal housing so the whole socket, plastic and all slides back and forth.

I'm going to chock this up the lessons learned, contact the vendor to let them know of the problem, then replace both tie rod assemblies with better stuff. This is a low drama situation for a guy who does his own alignments. I'd be upset if I were paying someone else to do it.