Reliability - what’s your experience been?

I've got a bunch of stuff here that needs repairing, most of it tube.

My worst experience was lending a local audio club member a pair of beautiful Cary Audio V12R monoblocks and having them returned to me with one side not working. It needed a new power TX - $900 plus shipping. Apparently, even though the tubes were well used, he decided to set the amps up in his basement system and leave them running overnight to 'warm them up'. Some spurious popping noises were heard but the amps were not turned off.

Always pains me to think back to being on the receiving end of someone's foolishness.

owned at least 7 Cary amps/preamps, never had an issue (still have the PH 302 mk II phono pre which is outstanding - sent products back for upgrades, not repairs, and have always received excellent service 

had a Sonographe TT in the 80’s which failed, other than that no issues aside from tubes wearing out 

My worst experience was lending a local audio club member a pair of beautiful Cary Audio V12R

@rooze ,  That was a lot of EL34s there!  Was that then rated as putting out twice the wpc of the conventional V12?

owned at least 7 Cary amps/preamps, never had an issue (still have the PH 302 mk II phono pre which is outstanding - sent products back for upgrades, not repairs, and have always received excellent service 

@markmendenhall  , in the days of Dennis Had, I used to rave about CAD's tech support and customer service.  In the post Dennis days I feel that has gone down hill.  However, I still cannot complain about reliability.  I did have a coupling cap go out on my V12  (stereo version) which was 20 years old at the time, and I can accept that failure (especially as it was probably my fault), but the help I got from tech support was worthless (they quoted me their shop rate and told me to request an RMA and ship it to them) but a kind gentleman on another audio forum helped me troubleshoot it via emails.  I pretty much swore off buying another Cary product because of that, but then I saw a SLP 05 going for a decent price in their preowned section; I had always wanted one, so I upgraded my venerable but modded SLP 90 (which was another Cary product that never gave me any problems).  Anyway, the SLP 05 sounds fantastic and so far no problems.  

Starting out, almost everything I bought was defective. Fortunately things have improved in the last 5 years to 50%  maybe 70% okay.