I've been lucky, had a long line of pretty much every HOTAS and decent stick ever made, and not had a lot of problems with any, as I tend to change/upgrade very often. Kept CH USD hotas the longest, and never broken anything with them.
The worse I guess though would be the very first Cougar that came out from TM. Mine had a ton of center slop, and no amount of mods, tricks, software curve changes/etc, could get rid of it - you could move the stick a good 1/3 of an inch and no response would happen. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a TON, believe me, and I ended up getting rid of it and getting another one, which didn't have that problem. Very frustrating I remember, as I had given away my CH set when the Cougar came in, and in those early days of AH, I couldn't hit anything with that first Cougar (it was a review set anyhow, and probably that was why it had problems, early, very early build).