What Olive said
Also have you contacted Safe N Sound about the issues your having, they have a FB page and they have really great customer service from what i have seen.
A friend was having issue with buckles and they sent her out a new one.

We have the Maxi rider AHR's as we wanted the safety (2nd in it's class at the time), the customer service & the comfort - we looked at the #1 in the class but there were not a huge deal of differences but DD didn't seem as comfy in it when we took her to check them all out and we take long trips a bit so that was also important to us.