Ayon CD transport problems

I have an AYON CD-2S, purchased new 3 years ago. About 6 months out of the 1 year warranty, the transport started to exhibit occasional reading problems.

A CD would be inserted, play for a short or longer while and then play would stop with the display reading LOAD!
This persisted on and off on a rather random basis until yesterday when it happened repeatedly. I turned off the player, let it sit for about 5 minutes and then proceeded to play 3 discs at which point the player would read the disc, start playing, stop, display read load, would read the disc, then the display would read LOAD.......etc. Same issues today.

Contacted AYON USA to find they wanted close to $1000 plus approx. $300 shipping to replace the Phillips transport! When I commented that I had every CD player I had ever bought in the last 30 years and that they all still worked and that I had never had a transport fail............I was told it was bad luck!

Having spent what I consider to be a huge amount of money to purchase the player originally, I feel as if I would be spending good money after bad to get who knows how much or little time out of my player with another transport.

Has anyone else had this type of failure from an AYON or any top loading CD player with a Phillips transport?