Sorry to reply to this one so late...
When I talked to B&M, they said they never heard of it before (like I said in my post). Only problem is I had gotten the name of a specific engineer from someone else on this site that had the problem. I confronted the guy about it and said I KNEW he had talked to at least one other person with the problem. I also explained I was not looking for an admission of culpability for a lawsuit, but rather I wanted to know if it was something they were acknowledging and fixing, or if the unit was inherently weak.
The guy said that they were originally using a liquid weld joint on the part of the shifter that connects the rod that goes into the transmission, to the horizontal bar that goes to the rod that goes into the shift knob. This liquid weld was failing on a high number of units, and they had since converted to a more reliable (and more expensive) weld. The guy was able to give me the part number and "manufactured date" cutoff point for the new welds vs. the old ones, so I could be sure the new shifter was of the new design.
When I got the new one, I compared the two, and the weld at the weak point is a LOT more beefy. Older shifters can be broken by a few hard shifts, the new ones would take superman to break them.
I wish B&M would admit the problem and replace them. I did miss a shift when mine broke and went from 2-1 instead of 2-3, causing a hair-raising situation on the highway as I was accelerating. I think that's why B&M doesn't admit the problem, so they don't open themselves up to a lawsuit.
Sorry for the long post - but that's what I found out. If anyone has a B&M break, and if you get a hard time from the place you bought it from, call up B&M directly. When my shifter broke, I had to get one locally at a hugely inflated price ($499), and I had paid $250 or so for the original. B&M refunded me $499 out of their pocket - no questions asked.
I was happy with their service overall, and they requested the old unit back to do an 'engineering analysis' on it.
