Jagman. I understand about the scope not being abused but still breaking, and how this makes you uneasy about using it. Don;t know if it makes you feel any better or maybe worse, but I have a friend who has a Zeiss scope that went down for no apparent reason. We are talking a scope that went for 1300 bucks. His experience with Zeiss customer service was a good one. So one can never tell about a product even with a good reputation. As you say, any man made thing can break.
I throw alot of opinions around on this site, and not all of themmay be useful.But I can tell you from direct experience that my dealings with the customer service of both Leupold and Bushnellwere excellent. With Leupold, They reset the paralax on my M8 4x scope with no questions asked and they paid for return shipping. This was a scope that was maybe 10-15 years old and I bought it used. I told leupold that but they fixed it anyway.
With Bushnell, I had an old Banner 3-9x40 which they had not the parts to fix, so they replaced it with a new one. And btw the new one was a better scope even though they were the same series.