Come on dude, you consider yourself "out" of money spent on a mouse that hasn't been produced in over 6 years?!
It was sold as new and it suffered from the same USB cable defect that many other wired Logitech mice do. If Amazon didn't issue a refund, I would have filed a complaint with the BBB.
After sales has been the best for me to the point in saving me money as they tend to not ask you to ship it back. I have had 2 of their lower end mouses fail on me and both times they sent me a replacement without requiring me to pay any postage.
That happened to me once and a little Gorilla glue fixed it (both mice still in use today). I'd argue that isn't a benefit though because they let a defective mouse leave the factory. Additionally, the reason why most companies do RMAs is so they can study the defective device to fix the issues for the next revision. By not taking hardware back, they keep making the same poor design decisions over and over. This leads to a high customer service complaint rate which translates to more costs that are avoidable which, in turn, translates to smaller profit margins. All of the markets Logitech competes in are highly competitive; making the same stupid mistakes over and over leads to what Logitech is doing now: rebranding.
The better plan for any company is to make a product that doesn't provoke contacting the company that made it in the first place.
I've only had a few mice of note:
-first generation MX518: excellent for many years
-second generation MX518: infant mortality, Logitech didn't honor hardware manufacturer warranty
-Revolution MX: no problems
-Performance MX: infant mortality (left click wouldn't register), Logitech sent another and I Gorilla glued and filed down this one so it is still operable today
-Performance MX: no problems
2 out of 5...#5 was a replacement so technically 2 out of 4. A 50% infant mortality rate is unacceptable.