I have a potential Nikon D7000 problem?

I seem to have terrible performance with anything that is a dark black. I just bought this camera brand new from best buy.
I get an excessive amount of color distortion in the dark ends that don't seem to show up on my camera's view screen. Even if I shoot in a monochrome setting, the odd distortion in the dark areas is there.
I've checked my quality settings and everything I could figure might be the cause and I can't figure it out. It happens with both raw and jpeg no matter what viewer or converter I use (Including the nikon viewer that came with the camera)

Anything dark or black sounds to me as if your shots are under exposed… And that is not the camera's fault, it's yours for not knowing what to do in low light.

Does this happen in sunshine? Does it happen when you use flash? If not then it's probably under exposed.

Regardless of camera underexposure is a killer as is over exposure. Make sure your light is correct and that your settings are correct for the amount of light you have. If there's not enough, use the flash.

Apart from the exposure values, are your white balance settings ok? Noise reduction level? Colour profile? Have you calibrated your computer monitor?
Try resetting your D7000 to factory default settings (two button reset: qual. And exp.comp.buttons), take a pic (in jpg and raw) in average lighting conditions with well-defined bright and dark areas, and compare result on camera screen and computer monitor. Also, be sure to check the corresponding raw file. If possible, print the.jpg result as-is (unprocessed) using a colour printer, and check again. If the print is ok, then it must be your computer screen, if not, return the camera.

Following on from what Jim posted, maybe I can explain this a little further.

Your camera has a light meter, and a couple of different settings, that may include spot, centre, zone, or frame weighted exposure. That's all very well and good provided the original scene is actually well balanced! So with many cameras if you took a photograph of nothing but a wall painted black, they would try to boost the exposure to mid gray. In the process of doing this, they'll open up the aperture, slow down the shutter speed, and possibly even bump up the ISO, which is going to cause noise. So there are going to be times when one way or another you will have to over-ride the cameras exposure settings!

Don't be freighted by your camera, unless you do something pretty stupid (take pictures of the sun or fire lasers at the sensor), normal playing around in the PASM modes is not going to damage it! If you want to learn more about how to take a good photograph, you'll find yourself moving towards using semi and full manual modes over time. It just takes practice!

First, watch this video tutorial: http://www.nikondigitutor.com/eng/d7000/index.html Who better than Nikon to teach you all about your Nikon D7000?

Second, its time you learned about the Exposure Triangle which consists of ISO-APERTURE-SHUTTER SPEED. This will help you:
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/learning-exposure-in-digital-photography