I really, really hope that is true. I really love my Glowforge.
I understand fully how bad things usually get reported, while good service, experiences go unreported,
And the Community here is superb!
Most likely true. But it’s not fun being one of the folks suffering.
What’s most disturbing isn’t the number of issues, but the number of folks with multiple replacements. I would expect that someone getting a replacement machine would have it gone over with a fine-toothed comb to make sure they don’t get a double-whammy. Sometimes it seems that the opposite happens.
I know it’s all anecdotal as we only see the problems, but these are not experiences that make one warm and comfy - hard to take the risk that you’ll be one of the multi-failure recipients and dragged down into replacement heck.
I had great customer service. I had a string of bad replacements three years ago. The one I have now is a trooper. I’d say that all in all they are good machines but our acceptable level of QA might not fit their current cost model. It’s tough to be on the long tail. But there certainly are examples of what seems like poor quality control of refurbished machines. My experience is that the are pristine. Even if there were some issues. I hope your next machine is a forever machine.
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This is the thing that keeps me from recommending the machine. My experience, like yours, has been great. But it’s old experience that doesn’t seem to necessarily be representative.
It’s like appliances and other products that last a long time - yeah, our Frigidaire has lasted 40 years (we got it used and have had it in the basement for extra refrigerator room), but I the company has had multiple owners, lots of publicized issues and several friends have had bad experiences recently. So yeah, if you can get a 1980s vintage Frigidaire, have at it. A new one? Who knows.
Likewise GF - if you can get a 2017/2018 manufacture maybe worth recommending. But a 2022 one? 
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Here’s another anecdote to file away…
Machine #1 (2019): My firstGlowforge only lasted a few months before either the tube or power supply abruptly quit on me… not sure which, but it went up in a puff of smoke from behind the tube somewhere, the big button turned purple, and it had to go back to the mothership.
Machine #2 (2020): I had a refurbished replacement next which was damaged in shipping and went right back. The tube, case and optics looked brand new.
Machine #3 (2020): The next replacement arrived undamaged, also looked brand new, and I used it heavily for around 2 years. I cut 1/4" thick MDF at full power and low speed for hours a day until the tube started to show telltale signs of power loss, as they tend to do after that many hours running at full power.
Machine #4 (2021): Glowforge honored their $499 price to replace my “consumed” consumable laser tube, but they had no repair facility and no refurbished machines in stock at the time, so $499 is what they charged to send me a brand new Glowforge Pro. That’s the current one, with a manufacture date of August 2021, that I’ve been working just as hard with no issues at all. I have no reason to believe the tube won’t be the first thing to go on this one too, and hopefully by then, they can just replace the tube rather than the whole machine.
All I recall being different between my 2019, 2020 and 2021 Glowforges was a longer black lid cable and a spiral design replacing the honeycomb design on the grate behind the exhaust fan.
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