And, for total finality, as someone who never ever asks for any additional compensation, in this case I thought it was appropriate just to ask and see, and they came back with a 35 pound voucher that's good for two years. So I guess I'll order some cheap consumable(s) that I won't care about if they never show up and have zero chance of ever needing to return because I would just throw them out instead.
Lastly, now that the refunds are indeed finalized, I did send the warranty team an email just for my curiosity to find out what ever happened with the wheels, to see if they were ever analyzed and deemed faulty. Recall that if you send something back to Wiggle and claim it as faulty, their warranty team liaisons with the manufacturer to do a fault analysis before deciding whether to give you a refund or not. They had finally agreed to a refund because once the wheels arrived at Wiggle, they somehow never made it within Wiggle back to the warranty department after 30 days, so they just said they'd refund me.
I asked what ever came of the wheels, if they ever made it back and were analyzed, and the warranty lady just said they just got sent back to the manufacturer so who knows what happened, no analysis was ever done anyway. I found this odd; while it seems in this case Wiggle may have (or may not have) taken a loss on the wheels, it still seems like regardless of refunding me, it would've been in their best interest to liaison with the manufacturer to still see if the wheels were defective so they could be made whole in turn if they are.
So, the conclusions here are either Wiggle was not made whole and took a loss they may not have needed to by not bothering to have an analysis done, or they were made whole sending the wheels back to the manufacturer regardless of fault status and the whole warranty analysis is just a big hassle/sham to deny giving refunds.
So I guess I'll never know for sure. But since this is done now, I'll just state that the wheels in question were Campagnolo Zondas.
Back in the market for wheels, and still on the Shimano boat anchors the bike came with. Would still like to give another set of Zondas a shot...