I have already “used up” two warthog stick bases. After a year or so of heavy use the wires in the stickbase show wear (in the part where they are in the plastick ball and rub against the plastic) and finally the plastic on the wires wears off showing the bare copper wires. This creates all kinds of false contacts and the stickbase becomes unusable.
Sending the stickbase in for warranty does not help much for the problem itself. The shop where I bought it, sent it to Thrustmaster. When TM hadn’t returned it after three months, the shop refunded me. So I bought a new one. It is a pain going through all the hassles, specially replacing the base in my simpit. Luckily the bases are just a bit over 100 euro. But this problem shouldn’t occur at all.
Another point where I needed TM service was when one of the springs in my TM rudder snapped. Again it took many months and I had to send in my old broken spring to receive a new one. I received exactly 1 replacement. Thought they would be more helpful and send a few as spares, but no. Luckily I found usable replacement springs on Aliexpress and bought a bunch myself,
So al in all TM service isn’t always helpful and it takes forever for them to react.