I know of three different people who’ve had problems with Hope hubs (though in the interest of fairness they were all damn unlucky):
They’d had either a spoke hole split and fail or a crack across the main body, and none of them had bought the hub new (I think one was the 4th owner). A call to Hope later and the guys on the end said “er… I wasn’t supposed to do that, ever. Whack the wheel in the post and we’ll put a new hub on it Free of charge” 😯
What makes Hope hubs so great is that they are machined in such a way that if they ever crack or split, they claim that it’s a manufacturing defect in the material used (which makes sense, there’s no welds on it and they’re all forged from a solid block), but the fact they extend their warranty against manufacturing defects like that is insanely good customer service. In effect they have a lifetime warranty!
I myself had a set of E4s, and they were shockingly bad when I got them. A Hope factory rebuild made a staggering difference, but sadly not even they were able to undo the damage the Gorilla who owned them before had done and they died 8 months later.
Hope are living proof we British can still make decent kit. I may be a Hope fanboi, but given how good their kit and customer service is I think that’s completely justified.