I have been lucky so far with power steering, my wife had a Polo with that system for 13 years 105K miles and it was always okay, my older daughter has a late 2009
Ibiza SC and so far so good.
Just another point, normally, if it is the battery that is failing and so has now got reduced capacity, it will most likely only be a
problem at a cold start in the morning when the car has been unused for a long time and the temperature is lower than during the day. In that situation, if you started the car and drove it for 30 minutes while the power steering light was on, if you switched the engine off then restarted it, as the battery will be in better condition than it was when you first started the car, it should start okay and the power steering light will be out.
If your car is having an intermittent failure then checking the logged fault codes with a VW Group specific code reader will hand over better information.
There is a company in UK called BBA Reman I think, they can repair these steering pump/controller assemblies by mail order, though that would mean the car being off the road for a few days until the repaired unit was returned. They don't change the coding on the controllers ever, so it would just be a case of refitting it and bleeding the rack.
When you say that you needed to add in some steering fluid, I hope that it was almost none, as if you needed to add in quite a lot it means that your steering rack end seals are leaking and that steering rack needs repairing or replacing! (these systems do not "use" any fluid if they are working okay".