There's always the possibility that the machine the tapes were recorded on had tracking issues rather than the new machine, have you tried a tape from a different source? otherwise I would return it and try another.
I picked up a Panasonic this morning and so far it's working OK, autotracked for a couple seconds then was fine.
They all look like Funai inside, (including my 5 year old low buck Sony which still works fine) , one difference I noted was the LG and Samsung only had a 3 month warranty while the Sony and Panasonic had 1 year.
If they don't trust their product to last more than 3 months then neither do I.
