Cartridge reliability

The Defects that the OP has referred to are to be found in Cartridges.
Not all Cartridges will have suffered from the conditions being referred to, but there is always a possibility that  there are Few Individuals who have had a unsatisfactory experience with a Cartridge, when it comes to it maintaining a Good Condition.

What matters from that point on,
is whether it was a experience when the Cartridge was a relatively New Model with little use, or whether it was a Long Term owned Cartridge with a long life of usage behind it.

The next thing that matters is how the Cartridge Owner felt they had been dealt with when reporting their discovered defect to a Supplier.

If the OP were to make a list of Cartridges that have their attention ?

A Google Search should show up Cartridge Owners experiences with possible reporting on any reliability issues to be seen.
In some cases, there will be a clear description of how the
Cartridge Owner felt about how they were supported when reporting their experience back to a supplier.

I have adopted this method to learn about a few Cartridge Brands.

The van den Hul cartridges are known for their hight degree of variable quality. The inespensive one are usally pretty good. The expensive ones it's a crap shoot. If you get a good one they are execptional. However, if you get one that is not good they are horrible (collasped cantilever. stylus falling off the cantilever,motor assembly not straight on the half body) and gobs of glue all over the place.

My 40 year old Supex, Shure, Audio Technica, Stanton, Signet and Grace cartridges still work like new, except of course for stylus wear.  Unfortunately, the actual stylus diamond just disappeared from my Yamaha MC9.  I reset everything on my turntable more than once before I figured that out.

Chakster, that may true in Japan but how do you know the importer, knowing their audience reports it at 10 Hz. You don't because it does not say. You can call the importer and ask I suppose. MC cartridges keep their compliance down so the cartridges principle resonance frequency is above the audio range. The lighter the effective mass of the moving system the higher you can run the compliance. Dynavector makes a great cartridge and the XV-1t has the lightest moving mass of the line with it's cross shaped metal armature vs the square one their other cartridges use. It has a longish cantilever and tracks at 1.8 to 2 grams. The most compliant MCs I know of are the Van den Huls at around 18 um/mN and they track at between 1.3 and 1.5 grams. They have a short cantilever and use a light plastic cross shaped armature, a much lower effective mass. I find it highly unlikely the XV-1t has a compliance of 20 um/nM at 10 Hz considering its effective mass and tracking force.  

I had a van den Hul MC One Special (2nd from the bottom of the line) for about 2500 hours and the stylus lasted until is completely wore out and sounded consistent the entire time I had it.

VPI just took over distribution of them and were a pleasure to deal with and were very accommodative because of the overseas shipping issues were able to do a replacement instead of a factory remanufacture.  I live nearby their factory and they actually set it up.

I've also heard good things about the Frog, although you're getting into pretty expensive territory. Make sure you have a well matched phono stage.