Yep, it's a crapshoot, but I think I'm going to pull the trigger soon on one of these anyway. Can you tell me which of the usual suspects (green-sum, hulustar, bigclothcraft, etc.... you went through?
What exactly was your problem, completely dead panel or massive backlight bleeding?
Just checked the order and it turns out we got two Nixeus WQHD 27" @$450 in August of 2012. After about 6 months we had one panel completely die which we RMA'd and received another one after a decent expense shipping. Shortly after the RMA the second panel we purchased died in a similar fashion. We currently have one that works and are not going to bother with RMAing the other dead panel.
B)You can spend an extra ~$30 for a "pixel perfect" unit.