I am so sorry that you have had these problems with your iron. I have had my Oliso for 10 years now, it's the original blue /teal one. My iron stopped heating up but I never thought of taking it to a repair person. I started using my cordless Panasonic then one day I had decided to get rid of the Oliso but something made me plug it in and to my delight it started working. I have not put water in it since it started working again and that's been well over a year. BTW I also had the same fear of leaving an iron down because of being accustomed to the iron popping up but that only happened once and fortunately I didn't burn anything but I use so many irons that it's just not a problem.