New iMac didn't come with Lion?

[iqwertyi]

Short Story:
Picked up a new 27" iMac (i7 with thunderbolt) on September 3, 2011 and Lion wasn't installed?

Long Story:
Apple replaced my old 27" with a new one. I bought Lion through the App Store and luckily made a backup USB.
My new 27" did not have Lion. I was very surprised with this. Maybe this one had been sitting on the store shelves for a while? Which I don't care about so much, but I had to install lion from my USB Backup.

Is this right? I didn't use any of the discs that came with the mac (didn't think about it then). Would Lion have been in those CD's? I just found it odd.

Thanks.

 

[Hellhammer]

You could have participated the up to date promo if you haven't had the USB installer.

 

[iqwertyi]

Thank you!
I will redeem it anyway. Can't have too many backups.

 

[Veryold]

I got a 21.5 last week. It had Snow Leopard installed and I was told if I sent a copy of the invoice to Apple I would get a code for a free download of Lion.
The discs supplied included Snow Leopard but Apple do not supply discs for Lion.
I received the code but have not downloaded Lion as yet. There has already been one update and judging by the many complaints a further update will not be far away.
If you have Lion you have saved yourself a 4gb download.

 

[iqwertyi]

So, how can I download Lion again?
When I redeemed my free App, it just said installed.
How can I actually re-download the app?

 

[quagmire]

Just go into the app store, go into purchases, and Lion should show up. Click install and it will download the app to the iMac.