Well speaking as an Ultimate Agent I'll offer the following:
1. Fragility: There is so much you can do to protect what is a delicate piece of equipment from robust usage. I've seen some very odd ideas about how roughly treated their monitors can be. Odd given the cost of the item and the clear need to be careful in usage.
If better care was taken in using them there, ensuring good cable management in usage and storage it would ensure less stress on plug at cable entry point.
2. Improvement: As a matter of course now UE's monitors are now reinforced with another outer sleeve at the cable entry point to act as a stressed member. Time will tell if we have cracked it this time. Its an evolving process refining and improving a product.
3. Alternative: As my learned friend and competitor (the order being deliberate) points out Ultimate now do an air-tube monitor which I have had in use for 6 months now, cheaper than the electrical monitor and more robust having no moving or electrical parts within the plug or thin cables.
Cheaper to produce, cheaper to repair should that be necessary but not as good audio wise as the electrical ones, certainly good enough for voice (phone/sat nav/intercom/bike2bike but music doesn't touch the quality of the driver in the plug monitor though it could be argued good enough for on bike use,especially when interfacing with a intercom system as opposed to directly into a music source.
But there is now a choice. Both of the above are produced from a mould derived directly from an impression of your ear. The fall-back position of having a separate mould are clear, you want another product you have a mould, you damage or lose one you have a mould and can replace the product without having to see us again or having to go through the chair, although as Fil says a mould has a 'shelf life' of 3-5 years as cartilage continues to grow.
4. Delays: We're a very busy company, comes with the territory of being the market leader in the leisure market and considered product of choice for many in industry and the security forces. And the production of all our products are done in-house, no outsourcing to a 3rd party with no quality control to unknown sources. Many of our competitors on the leisure side are front-end order taking agents/hobbyists even with little more to their operation than a a sales pop-up, a small bag of kit for impression taking and then off it goes to someone else to produce, our competitors in a commercial sense are labs producing hearing aids or industrial plugs on a Europe wide scale.
The company is going through significant expansion right now to increase production and reduce lead times and also to increase accessibility into us by way of a network of audiologists throughout the UK and an increasing number of our own trained and accredited otoscopy and impression taking technicians.
5. Improvements: We recognise at times we have short-comings and try to reduce them when they are identified to us, getting to the top of the pile is the easy bit, staying there is the challenge and a constant programme of improvement in both the products and the process is paramount to this.
If you have issues with your products from Ultimate or the service you have received I offer you here and now an opportunity to be heard to see how we can remedy things for you. My PM box is always open to you for this.
I was a customer of UE products for 5 years before I worked for them and bought for hard cash all their motorcycle products so I know and appreciate there is a hard decision to pay out for a premium product, personally I believe them to be worth every penny I paid for them.
Ultimately (if you excuse the pun) do your research, compare the market and make your own decision, it is your money after all and whoever you buy from will want a decent chunk of it.
The important thing is protecting your hearing, something Fil (Schiannini) and I always agree on
