This pretty much was the case right from the start, and I thought I could ignore it by using my touch pad for scrolling down. But I always wondered if this isn’t just a hardware issue. Anything I can try?
Have you tried cleaning the ball with paper? From time to time, when the scroll ball stops working for me, I’ll scroll the wheel with paper between my finger and the scroller ball. Dirt on the ball sticks to the paper, which cleans it and clears the sensors.