Too bad you had to cut open the battery, but good news that it is well balanced. I don't remember the exact numbers but each cell of my battery was a little over 4 volts.
So my guess is the HVC was set too low when that BMS was programmed, since that was one of the things BMSBattery had to set on my replacement BMS.
At least now you know you won't be hurting the battery at all to use it.
Maybe there's an ES member that purchased the BMS programming kit that BMSBattery sells (fairly expensive, about $100 plus shipping) and you could reprogram your BMS. It would actually make more sense to buy the programming kit then to send your battery back to BMSBattery. I don't know how difficult the kit is to use, but I'd be glad to send you my old BMS to practice with. Of course a new BMS is only $20 plus shipping, but it's a pain to install.
http://www.bmsbattery.com/smart/135-sma ... nitor.html