There's nothing wrong with objects or classes in OCaml -- it's just that most problems can be expressed using a simplest abstraction technique such as modules. OCaml has steadily improved in every recent release to further reduce the set of problems that need objects (open types, GADTs, first class modules, destructive substitution in module types).

For problems where objects and classes are a good fit (e.g. something requiring open recursion), then OCaml objects are fine and sound. They are used quite nicely in CIL for implementing the visitor pattern, and I like them in the Lablgtk OCaml bindings as well. They also provide a nice bridge to foreign code in OCamlJava and js_of_ocaml when compiling to platforms that make more use of objects.

It's worth noting that class types and object types are distinct in OCaml, so you can often use objects without involving classes at all. This is explained in Real World OCaml: https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/objects.html

Not using OCaml because it possesses an optional object and class extension is a little strange. It never really gets in the way...

Since that is the 'current consensus' as you say, it seems like the ocaml community converged on the opinion I formed 10 years ago. But it wasn't necessarily the consensus then.