Lol, yeah, the times where 'joysticks' just had a couple of switches inside are long gone 
I once wrote a letter (the paper stuff with funny pictures, called stamps on it, you remember? 
) to Atari that I'd like to buy some spare parts for my broken controllers. The PCBs with the contacts and those white things that stuck inside the stick and pressed the contacts on the pcb. Long time no replay, but one day I had a package in the mail. A letter inside told me that those parts are not for sale but they hope these will do the job. The package held 10 (ten!) PCBs and 4 of these white thingies.....I was very surprised 
The first Competition Pro I had leaf switches and the holders were broken within a few days. The 2nd generation with the microswitches was far better
Well,I believe Atari's service (at least here in the Benelux) was not too bad. I've received info about how to mod a Megafile to add a second hard disc to the unit from them and spare parts for my Lynx, all without costs.
Apart from that I was lucky enough to visit their headquarters one day when I was secretary of a local Atari users club. We got lots of schematics to support the users, all on red paper to prevent photocopying (still have those).
But that was all later....
When I had the 2600 controllers break down we strangely never had the idea to contact Atari or something like that....I simply thought they would break again sooner or later.
It's so weird that the leaf version of the competition pro has such a bad reputation (I've seen German videos about themmsaying they are unreliable) and mine is still absolutely perfect. And I mean, I've played the shit out of that thing, doing Demon Attack marathons, and I won't mention the DK games on the A8
I never liked microswirches anyway
