Stuart, it's hard to see what your complaint about Adam is here.

His response to you appears to have been 'I can only apologise wholeheartedly. If you want to return the cartridge I will refund you and pay for the postage. Sorry if you are, as you say “not impressed”. But again it was sold with good grace. '

Can't really say fairer than that especially after a gap. (How long was the gap btw?)

And I'm sure what he meant was 'good faith' indicating there was no intention to deceive - are you claiming there was?

Few of us have microscopes or are expert in assessing the various tip shapes even if we did have. It's also easy to be rose tinted about something you enjoyed but took out of commission for whatever reason. Cartridges do wear. And Expert can be a bit melodramatic in their feedback at times (I've seen this myself in other circumstances) after all they are hardly uninterested bystanders - they want to flog you a paratrace, their one-club-fits-all solution to any problem under the sun.

FWIW I send my cartridges for inspection to J7 at Audio Origami, his inspection fees are cheaper and he isn't trying to flog you a retip, so you can be sure you are getting impartial advice.