Sure did but I was told they can't replicate it... yet
True...and very hard to fix what you can't see.
I sure can't replicate the pairing issues, frankly. Every Zigbee device I've tried to join to my C8 (incl Visonic, Iris, Hue, Aqara, & Sylvania/Osram) on any of the FW releases have successfully joined. On some of the ealier FW versions some of them fell off again, but starting w/.118 and especially .121 things are holding, no losses.
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I have two C-8's (v2.3.5.121) but only one of them has Zigbee enabled.
I just enabled it on the 2nd C-8 and it was set to chan 20, power 12, but I changed that as quickly as I could, since chan 20 is what the first C-8 is using oh so well. 
I then tried to pair an Iris v3 Motion Sensor that gave me problems when the C-8 was first released. In the interval, I've used this specific Motion Sensor to test all platform versions, successfully. However, today, now, it's not working, giving me the "Looks like you're having problems" state:
The Iris v3 Motion Sensor is blinking blue, indicating it's trying to pair, following a factory reset.
Second pairing attempt... failed the same way.
I then tried it on my original Zigbee C-8 and it paired first try, like it has with the most recent 4-5 platform iterations. Of course the working C-8 is more mature in the sense it has 23 Zigbee devices including a fist full of repeaters that keep those pesky Hampton Bay Fan Controllers working.
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Good example of why this is so hard to figure out. Two c8s in the same environment and one works fine and the other not.
I'm assuming you're trying to join the sensor near the hub, so the absence of repeaters and such shouldn't be a factor.
I left my C8 on the default 16 power setting that it came with, It's on channel 20 and my C7 is on channel 25.
I just reproduced the same 'failure to join' behavior; this time with the exact same C-8 I've been joining stuff to (in 'debug' mode) successfully for several days; still on same .121 firmware.
Key to producing it (at least for me, since I apparently live in beta tester hellmouth) is to simply soft reset the hub. I left the C-8 on same channel as before (14), no apps.. device joins fail in various ways (stuck on "Found a Zigbee device, initializing...... please wait, still initializing... ", "looks like trouble" etc.)
I did not use any repeater, but of course all join attempts were within a foot or so of the C-8.
EDIT: I did not restore any database, just tried joining devices after soft reset.
Logs showed only one of three trials actually produced a 'Device' instance (it was an iris V2 contact sensor), but the device didn't actually work when activated. Interestingly, the event log did show
"Initializing Zigbee Device " followed by 64-bit MAC and device ID's for all failed trials as well.
Again, this was using same C-8 with same devices previously joined without issue prior to soft reset (though some likely joined for first time with earlier releases of firmware)
Tagging @mike.maxwell @bobbyD
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Odd...I don't expect that every user experiencing these issues types of issues has done a soft reset, but likely at least some have - unfortunately maybe even more likely after problems started, as a part of troubleshooting that we might suggest to them. 
So we may have inadvertently reinforced the issue?
Or...the soft reset is a coincidental issue to something else we aren't/can't see happening. [sigh]
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Yes very odd. Soft reset is supposed to enable fixing a configuration problem not causing one; yet clearly I just used it to turn a functional C-8 into one that will no longer perform Zigbee joins.
Don't ask me to speculate (though I'd love to; 'Resets' were a major system test function back when I worked on jurassic hardware... they're not trivial; lots of stuff is happening that sets the stage for all functions thereafter)
.
I can't remember ever doing a soft reset on the C8. Most likely never did since I migrated my zwave network from day one and thankfully that's still going strong. I did reset the Zigbee radio though.
Not likely that soft reset is the cause of this issue for (probably all) folks that have encountered join issues, but maybe it will allow putting the hardware into the same ' join failure prone' state to allow the root cause to be determined.
..anyway, blame @csteele for putting the idea in my head, lol.
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Some progress reported (at this point for other devices) but encouraging to hear that HE are identifying/working through the issues, and finding those fixes should help w/figuring out others. Good to see this news...
I dunno...I've seen you put some interesting ideas in your head on your very own. 
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Spec issues? I can join the same devices to a Sonoff dongle p in ha with no issues. Sounds like a chipset issue no ? 3.0 or 1.2 both join
too soon to speculate, even for me...
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You're way to logical and balanced for this group.
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I hear yeah man. personally I'm just thinking you guys should just roll the stack back to whatever it was. let people know to get better repeaters so devices stop dropping off. Just my thinking . I'm sure you guys will figure out. Thanks for all the efforts so far.
cant do that, not possible, that fixes some issues, and raises others.
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FWIW, I restored the database to soft-reset C-8 (.121). Reset/rejoining devices was quick and normal.
I then tried 'Remove Device' with Third Reality motion sensor; it failed to rejoin. Timed out, 'looks like trouble..'; device left with LED blinking blue.
So the only interesting part of the 'soft reset' in the scenario I described is that my troubles in joining coincided with not restoring any database after the soft reset. Join issues seem to be correlated with not having a prior instance in the database; I'm not seeing an issue resetting/rejoining devices that already are in the database. Delete them (or soft reset without a database restore) and joining is problematic.
I've deleted Hue and I believe Visonic devices and been able to add them back to the hub...several others have reported more success in joining when they deleted the device and then re-joined it. So removing a device doesn't seem to block re-joining it in those instances.
Or am I misuderstanding?
Only problem with that is for the person that just received a fresh Hub. The only way I've been able to get stubborn devices to finalize was to rebuild the Zigbee network then pair. Sometimes I would have to put the hub into pairing mode the hub finds the device then do a rebuild network while it's trying to finalize. It's crazy Weird. you'll actually see the device listed as Dev in the zigbee logs then watch it finalize and work fine.
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I just paired 11 Hue outdoor Motion sensors in Home Assistant. No wonder people are having problems with them. If you don't do a factory reset even if you removed them properly from whatever coordinator. They are stubborn as .... to get paired to whatever you're trying to use in place of the original coordinator. I had to hard reset them multiple times to get them to pair fully. Zigbee2mQtt you can see a little more of the process.
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