Brand new shoes, broken nut plate?

Hi all, I'm very new to cycling as a whole so I hope this isn't a stupid question. I bought these shoes today, got them home, went to put cleats on them and realised that what I believe is called a nut plate is just completely unattached to the base of the shoe, making it impossible to attach the cleats. Now I assume this is a straight-forward defect and I should return them, but I wanted to see if perhaps this is normal? Perhaps these plates can be easily adjusted and this is something I can fix myself (and might be expected to fix myself?). Thank you in advance!