In your case, the parts were within specified limits, but outside your desired/selected band. In ours, the parts were outside the specified limits.

What they'd sold us was a bunch of parts that should, by all standards, have been relegated to the rubbish heap. We were building FD boxes for the mass market, and weren't concerned with how we did it, so, at the insistence of my client, who had to get product out the door in time for the holidays, we compensated for the low output voltage with additional circuitry costing about $0.10 for the component and $.50 in additional labor. Considering that it could have been avoided by having properly functional parts, I was not pleased. Fortunately, I had allowed for the use of 7805 regulators, which were already in the circuit, in the 7812's place, so we could have used them as well. There wasn't time, however. At least we didn't have to respin the PCB's.

RE