We have been very happy with our Ortliebs. I wonder if this couple just got a dud run from the factory? Perhaps their panniers are of an older type? I don't know...
What I can say is that ours carried us almost flawlessly through almost 48,000km of touring. They remain waterproof, if a bit faded. There is one hole in one of my back panniers but that was my own fault (I scraped the bike up against a sharp piece of metal). The tire patch I applied to the bag did the trick to fix it and it's still on there.
The few problems we did have:
In Alberta - about 42,000km into our trip - we had to replace some of the plastic clips and buckles on the straps as they'd broken, we think purely through 3 years of daily clipping and unclipping and extreme temperatures. Ortlieb sent us replacement attachments, which Andrew sewed on
Generally - the grippers inside the top frame attachment can indeed come off but we found a bit of duct tape held them in place