I can’t really say as I haven’t personally had much private correspondence with them. I believe I did send Decware a question about their ZTPRE preamp about a year ago and didn’t receive a response. Unanswered emails or very late replies are quite commonplace throughout the industry in general IME. I’m not saying this deems your situation acceptable, merely stating that it’s not uncommon. One time I sent an email to VPI and received a response three months later. Lol. Those instances were also prior to Covid ruining the notion of customer satisfaction in most industries.
Fortunately, there are always good alternatives to nearly any brand/product within a given budget. No one brand holds prerogative over value. The forum darlings that are often espoused as value leaders or “giant slayers” (Schiit, Lounge, Tekton etc) typically end up performing at a level commensurate with their price IME. Very rarely do I come across a product that performs well beyond expectation based on price, and the ones that actually do, often fail to gain the same traction as the aforementioned. Take for example, the Parasound ZPhono XRM. It actually performs just as well as the JC3 Jr and does so with lower noise and greater versatility. IME it is a true slayer, yet, we don’t encounter YT and Stereophile reviewers gushing over it, probably because it’s not from a cottage brand and/or is deemed an “entry-level” product. Meanwhile, Lounge and Schiit offer what is essentially one model of phono preamp, so how can it not be a killer one when there’s little to no room for upgrading within their catalogue?
Suffice to say, I would be very surprised if your Sutherland isn’t proving to be a worthwhile upgrade over the Lounge preamps. Not to say the latter are bad, it’s just that they’re not the reference-grade, “high-end” products some would lead us to believe.