I, too, use namecheap. In fairness I’m not as sophisticated as at least 95% of people on hacker news but it has certainly met all of my needs for the half dozen sites and 2 dozen domains I own
Not my experience at all. Every time I've opened a support ticket, the initial response has been fast and the problem has been resolved quickly (based on the 3 or 4 incidents I've had over around a decade with them).