I hate to be overly critical, but I have owned a lot of pedals, and, because of my obsession with voltage controllers and expression pedals, I've gone through a lot of volume pedals... a lot of them have become "scratchy" when their potentiometers got dirty a few have developed quirks, some I never liked the feel or the sweep of... but my Ernie Ball (a staple name in the market, and not a cheap pedal) was the only one that ever actually failed me. As in-- while playing, it quit.
I did use the Ernie Ball as an actual volume pedal (instead of a voltage controller), and I stuck with it because I didn't have anything better... I assumed that, because they were such a well respected name, how could you top the go-to guys in the volume pedal industry? But, much like Boss pedals, popularity isn't a great barometer for quality-- I never really liked the feel or sweep of the pedal (there was a switch inside to change the sweep, but it was a change from "I don't like that" to "I like that less"), and it developed a "crackle" in its sweep after about two months. Still I kept it. After about eight months, the cord/spring/pulley system that controls the volume began to slip, and would no longer sweep the full range from full volume to silence. I popped it open, but I just never could get the thing (spring tension and looping cords) to function again.
I'm betting a lot of people don't "play" their volume pedals the way I do; I imagine the crackly sweep doesn't bother someone who only uses this pedal to mute their signal while tuning, and, if they just use it to silence themselves during breaks, it doesn't get the kind of wear a player like me would give it... I like doing sweeps and swells with a volume pedal. I really use them.
My experience with the Ernie Ball was: I didn't like it when I got it, I continued not to like it as the sound quality degraded, and I'm holding a grudge since it opted to fail completely.