Never had a problem with mine, my son and I own it jointly and he has used it on a lot of his friends cars. I use it at least twice a month on our cars so from a dependibility standpoint.......if it can stand up to my son's use its a good product. As for pads etc Auto Geek has an excellent web site that not only shows you how but what to use. To get minor scratches out I use an orange Lake County cutting pad. For polishing I use Lake County gray buffing pads. These are the 6" ones, there are others available. I use Meguiars products when it comes to scratch removal, also does a great job on your headlights.....Zaino polish for the rest. One of the beauties of the orbital polisher is that its pretty much idiot proof, you are not supposed to be able to burn through the clear coat. Well just a word of warning, I fgured a way to do it on my wife's Mercedes. It can be done, I was trying to get a pretty deep scratch out and about 15 minutes into it bingo. So you still have to be careful. The PC is a great product, you can literally buff out a Crossfire in 1/2 hour tops.