I think Clive Sinclair was notorious for wanting products to be brought to market quickly, with pretty aggressive feature sets. They very well may have noticed it at the factory, but didn't want to do a fix because it was technically functional.
It sold on some stock of existing ZX Spectrum hardware, but mostly it sold models it developed:
* Spectrum +2 -- a Spectrum 128 with a mechanical keyboard and built-in cassette drive
* Spectrum +3 -- a redesigned Spectrum 128 with a DOS from Locomotive Software and a 3" (not 3.5") floppy drive. Dropped compatibility with 48 peripherals such as Interface 1 and Microdrives, and 128 peripherals such as the numeric keypad, serial ports, etc. Added the ability to page out the ROM and replace it with RAM, so it could run CP/M 3, also ported by Locomotive.
* Spectrum +2A, the black +2: a cut-down +3 with a cassette drive.
These were designed by Amstrad engineers and contractors, and manufactured by Amstrad. No Sinclair involvement I'm aware of at all.