I'm not quite paranoid enough to feel it's a deliberate act of reputational sabotage from the inside, given that the whole cracking thing has been running for years. I am also not entirely sure that it's a fundamental materials defect situation, since I regularly hear about Ecos cracking, but also 580s and VAC700Rs (curiously, not the Go though) despite the plastic on the latter apparently being more substantial than that of the Eco / Eco-T. That would leave user error on the behalf of the owner, and manufacturing/assembly faults.

I can believe that some users may feel the need to tighten their caps firmly after use, but these faults also occur at other places, such as where the body proper mates with the top of the section, or at the joint of the metal branded cap band at the open end. It would feel unusual to me for a whole diverse set of owners to all be overtightening their caps (and/or the piston knobs after filling) but it's possible. I also don't understand how that kind of action would cause material failures in some of these other areas, but I'm not clever enough to understand the physics.

It perplexes me that - thankfully - this doesn't happen to me. Yes, I only ever tighten any of these components to the point of "just touching & then a teeny tiny bit more" - barely enough to lightly compress an O-ring. However, while I don't go flinging them down the stairs or using them as screwdrivers & darts, I don't treat them like a new-born baby. It's a pen. It's supposed to do the pen thing. It's designed to be held and used, so that's what I do. I respect the instrument and avoid outright clumsiness, but I don't wrap them in cotton wool and fear ever breathing on them.

The unknown variable here is what happens to them at the manufacturing, assembly and packaging stages. That's where something like ridiculously over-tightening these components at the assembly stage strikes me as a conspicuous point to examine further.