Just got back from the Apple store, and they were able to switch out my i7 15in for me, even though it was CTO. They refunded me the difference for the 7200rpm drive, and everything else was the same. I have to commend Apple on making this right. I was surprised they even had a process to switch mine out and refund me the difference. They said it was the first time they had ever done it, so I don't know if every store would do this.
A couple things to note: It hadn't frozen on me all morning, so I was wondering if I should even go down there until I could reproduce it. Luckily, it froze as soon as I took it out to show them. I told them my whole story, and they also noticed that the bottom of my case was not flush with the body, which points to build quality issues.
Another problem I noticed, it would wake up in the middle of night and just start running until opened and closed the lid (definitely not a WoL issue). That may or may not be related.
Personally, I'm glad I didn't wait for a fix. I plan on switching out the HD with a SSD in a year, so it was a compromise I could live with. YMMV...