Products that don't behave the same should really have different part numbers. In this example, perhaps they could call them SN550 and SN550A (B, C, etc.) or even SN551, SN552, ... if the majority of the design hasn't changed.
Yes, a great current example is consumer motherboards with Intel’s I225V network controller. The controller is unable to run at 2.5Gbps without a fix. The controller was fixed in revision 3, but a huge number of boards are shipping with revision 2. This is two years after the issue was identified, and there is no way to see which one you will get. Even boards manufactured this year have the old NIC, so I assume vendors are being shady to liquidate old NIC stock.
So you get sold a motherboard with a 2.5X NIC slowdown compared to advertised (it gets downgraded to 1Gbps). Update the figure on the box if you’re going to do that!
The most recent example of a "soft recall" would be Gigabyte's exploding PSUs. It makes you wonder how much retail outlets knew, because it is clear that Gigabyte was fully aware of the issue - and silently fixed their design.