I have never touched Gauntlet or Corrupted Gauntlet before, but with Cuppa I've reached 320+ Gauntlet completions. 60% of them CG, without even knowing the mechanics.
I've spend about 100 hours on the bot and haven't worried at all. It never gets stuck, and can be run for 20 hours without issues.
It just kept completing those easy CG and taking breaks as configured.
As for loot, I've achieved 4/5 missing the enchanted seed, but gained about 50M profit from this on my Ironman.
10/10 would recommend, to everyone.
Regarding "ban rate" of the activity and/or bot's techniques:
No one has conclusively reported that they've been banned using this bot yet. I've botted 300 hours+ CG (mostly with DI & Mouse Hopping, some without), others more. One person mentioned he got banned after using it, but he also botted 7+ hours a day for weeks prior, so it was likely a delayed ban. Of course more bans will probably come in the future, but it's currently been very safe.
Regarding DirectInput & Mouse Hopping:
These can be disabled in settings and the bot will function fine, but the options exist because it improves the consistency/perfomance (especially for slower PCs, as Runemate's mouse is a bit inaccurate). As mentioned, there's been no conclusive proof this increases risk.
Regarding price:
I'm sorry the bot isn't working well for you, but the price is for the 80-90%+ WR a lot of people are seeing with CG. The price may not be worth it if you're having lower winrates, which might be happening for you, but I've been very actively trying to help debug issues. 95% of the issues reported were caused by plugins so please turn them all off when botting if you haven't yet. There's a few other things that could be issues, but it might also just be necessary to try again after I've made more improvements.
Regarding not using melee:
I don't know of any CG bots that use melee because it's much more complicated logic, and not really much better than mage/ranged.
Regarding killing the bear/taking extra time:
This can be disabled by toggling off "kill all demi-bosses". The bot defaults to killing the bear because it's more consistent; Demi bosses only drop their weapon part once, so if you come across 2 bears in a row (and don't kill them) + say a dragon, the run will be lost. But if you kill the 2 bears + dragon you're guaranteed to get all three T3 items.
"this is not the cuppa im used to"
I am sorry you're disappointed. I've been working on this about 5 months and will continue improving it, but it should be working solidly for most. If you're having specific issues I can help debug.
Hopefully this gives some insight into my thoughts/what's going on, and apologies the reply is so long.