Isn't it kind of the opposite though? Sitting there watching it drip for 10 minutes is exactly what you should do first, not after tearing the thing apart twice. I've learned the hard way that if I just stare at a problem long enough before grabbing tools, I usually spot the dumb little thing right away. The real fix is patience, not knowing more about coffee machines.

Cheap parts always fail at the worst time.

That $1,800 figure hits close to home because I went through almost the same thing in Gulf Shores back in 2019, except mine was a $2,300 claim when a strike came in through the coax and cooked the modem, two TVs, and the garage door opener on a panel I'd swapped eight months before. Here's the part most people skip over though, it's not really the surge module that saves you, it's the grounding and bonding being right when the module goes in. A surge device on a house with a bad ground rod or a loose bond is just a green light on the wall that gives the customer a false sense of safety. So now when I quote the add-on I also walk the ground and hit the water pipe bond and the UFER if it's there, and I put that on the invoice as its own line item. That way if something does pop later, you've got a paper trail showing you checked the whole path and not just screwed a box to the side of the panel. Your mileage may vary by state but in coastal areas with sandy soil the ground rod situation is usually worse than the surge question.