Broken Shure Headphone Becomes Lodged in Ear

The foam detached from the headset; notice the plastic cylinder still attached to the headphone.

In March of 2009 I purchased a pair of Shure SE210 headphones. They replaced my Bose In-Ear Headphones, and in my opinion the sound isolating properties and overall audio quality were quite superior with the Shure headphones. However, recently problems began to arise. The rubber housing of the earpieces wore off of both earpieces and the wire at one point near the 3.5mm jack began to fray. These I considered minor issues and I intended to follow through on a warranty repair.
Then, last night I went to remove my headphones from my ear and the foam tip in one ear became disconnected from its plastic connector and hence the foam became lodged deep in my ear. The earpiece is foam with a plastic cylinder on the inside, and this slides over the headphone. The foam became detached from the cylinder and I needed tweezers to extract the tip. Had we not been able to withdraw the tip, a visit to the hospital may have been warranted. What strains me most about this is not that the tip simply slid off of the headpiece. Instead, the tip had a mechanical failure because the adhesive failed. There was no prior sign that the tip was damaged and this was quite unexpected. This mechanical failure of the device is a safety hazard and is dangerous.

The rubber housing of the headphone, broken and detached from its regular position during regular use.

When I told my brother about this problem this morning, he told me that the same thing happened with his Shure SE210 headphones one week ago. The foam separated from the plastic while he was in the car and the driver had to pull over and help to extract the foam piece.

What this signifies to me is that my headphone may not have been a simple defective product, but that the design itself may be prone to failure. This make me question whether it is safe to continue using this Shure product and, compounded with the other minor problems I have had with the headphones, makes me question whether the product is built to the high quality standards that Shure claims. I currently have a customer service inquiry submitted to Shure, and I await their response to this incident.