TBH I haven't run it much over the last few weeks due to doing other things entirely - including the on-going experiment with the Cheap Office 2016 Pro Plus (still seems fine, although the price has risen to nearer £16-20 if you want to buy it now)
As for the old dead dongles (I have 2!),there were no external marks on them after they died - but I haven't taken the lids off to see if I can see any internal damage.
As for the guy in the 360 Group, it would be interesting to know just what his antenna setup was like as that may give a clue as to what has been happening.
OTOH, Nooelec appeared to blame the failures on transients getting onto the coax cable from the PSU with an excuse along the lines of, effectively, these dongles aren't as robust as consumer sat kit, and I quote:
"Satellite receivers tend to use highly integrated IC solutions and are produced in volumes orders of magnitudes higher than our SDRs They tend to be far more resilient, actually (though that's a generalization, there are a vast array of sat receivers out there).
I wouldn't say the NESDR is generally susceptible to transient voltages, but when there is possible 10+V DC on the RF input, even in short bursts, you are looking for trouble."
In my case, there should definitely not have been any DC voltages on the input because I inserted a DC blocker unit rated at >>10VDC (probably nearer 60V) between the coax /13V DC inserter and the dongle input.
So make what you will of the Nooelec comment as I have heard nothing from them since early March and they never actually requested the return of either of the failed units.