I know Johannes is not around at the moment. Nevertheless-
I assume that it was intended that you now, when you have no caster levels, but use an item that animates dead, even if that is an item everyone can use, you have no hopes of controlling the animated creature.
This makes these items in effect useless to anyone but caster classes.
I would like to suggest that items that are flagged as "usable by all" are freed from the Summoning Point System constraint.
To clarify, my level 3 Bard / 2 Barbarian used a Torn Paper (Animate Dead, usable by everyone) and got the message that he can not control the summoned zombie since it costs 75 points, as opposed to the 10 he has available. I'd like things to work in this regard as they used to.
Johannes has implied that item summons should not be counting towards your exerted control. This is a bug.