I've had a 24-70 mm lens for a few years now, and obtained some stunning results with it on my D7000. Never thought I had an issue with the lens until I switched to a D800E.

On the D800E, I am really noticing some softening in the corners of the images, and to my eye this is more noticeable in the right side of the image than the other. The center of the images are always pretty much tack sharp, and the corner/edge softness is not really that noticeable until you zoom in at 100% on the images.

I am assuming that this was not noticed on the D7000 because those areas of the frame would have been cropped by the D7000's sensor.

The lens has already been sent back once to Nikon for cleaning and calibration..

My question is this. Is this fairly typical behavior for this lens? If I were to try different copies would I stand a chance of finding one that is sharp from corner to corner or is that something that is really just a golden unicorn when it comes to zooms?

I found my 24-70mm wasn't sharp on my D800.  In hindsight I probably should have gotten it calibrated, I did not know that at the time. I did quite a few tripod test shots but none were nearly as sharp as my 70-200mm.

That's funny, I got the opposite results on my d600. The 70-200 was soft in the corners while the 24-70 was good all across. I was OK with it since the 24-70 is my landscape lens where as the 70-200 is more subject focused. Luck of the draw I guess.

Most lenses will be softer in the corners than the center, including the 24-70mm.  Yes, the D7000 sensor crops out all the corners.  Since the D800 is an uber-high res camera, any flaws in the lens will be more easily seen.  That said, one should not judge sharpness of an image at 100% viewing.

Especially if you're shooting at 2.8