Joint pins, do they misalign over time?

Damage to the facing on the shaft is almost always the cause of your situation. This would be generally be caused by impact. If you use joint protectors and are careful not to drop the shaft or allow the joint end of the shaft to contact anything then you should not experience this problem.

It is not a matter of abuse. it does not take much to cause slight damage to the facing of a joint ring and even a very slight little ding and cause the problem.

Misalignment of the insert is not likely to ever occur, and if it ever did it would likely be caused by some sort of impact or possible over tightening the shaft.

Inserts and trim rings can come loose, so can metal joints. That would be the first thing I would check. On cheaper cues, if those parts rotate at all it can throw things off.
Not many production cues actually utilize the inserts properly, either. For a piloted joint to actually do anything, it should be slightly snug as the cue goes together. Most of them have way too much slop in them for it to even be useful.

you could just ship it to a repair place, not like it costs much to ship a cue.