I'm sorry you are having issues, it can be so frustrating. I had a long-standing feud with Joann where I refused to shop with them about the last 7 years over a roll of batting I ordered that never arrived. I stayed home for WEEKS waiting for it. CS told me that I'd have to cancel the order to get a refund. Then they tried to charge me a restocking fee for the batting sent directly from the manufacturer to me that never arrived... I told them that if they could show me GPS proof that the delivery had ever been within a mile of my house, and I'd be glad to pay but reminded them this was something as big as a person, it wasn't something that was going to slip between any cracks and they had a lot bigger problems in their supply chain than me. Anyway... the annoyance and resentment about a shop can last for a long time.
I have gotten two machines online (from amazon) in the last couple of years. One was a mechanical Eversewn Sparrow for me to take to groups. It is loud. It is "fast enough" but too slow for me as a regular machine, is like driving a truck on a long up-hill grade with your foot to the floor
They don't want you oiling anything but the bobbin area, but my Sparrow developed a chirp and for an under $200/over 2 year old machine, I happily voided my warranty and oiled anything that moved until the chirp went away. All in all, still quite happy with the purchase for a portable machine. With the set of criteria and budget I'd buy again. I'd buy something different with a slightly higher budget.
My most recent machine also came from Amazon, a straight stitch Juki 2000qi. I went back and forth on what did I really want, and almost 99% of the time I straight stitch fast and part of me feels the more bells and whistles, the more things there are to fail. It had all the features I really wanted, but I did make one mistake. I needed a top loading bobbin because I have a table, but I guess the term for what I really want is a drop down bobbin. That is, my machine has an opening on the top of machine, but the bobbin case is one of the basic sort of thing with the wing that clips in place. I wanted the opening where all I had to do was drop the bobbin in and twist it around, and preferably be able to see through a clear bobbin to see how much thread.