Usually doing a 2 star alignment I get the first star (I usually pick Hadar) in the spotting scope FOV and use the direction buttons to centre it, then the 2nd star (I have the list set to Order by Magnitude, and pick Antares say) and the star is better aligned but nowhere near central.
The message "Successful Alignment" means nothing - it just confirms you have completed the process by pressing "Enter" after centralising the star. The mount has no idea whether you have done this correctly or not.
I've not had mine long either and I had similar issues, (including not knowing I could change the rate of slew !) I usually use 6-8 for the 1st star, speed 9 is way too noisy ! and then 2 or 3 to centralise.
Still have issues with Park, sometimes it parks nowhere near "scope up, weights down" as it should
(now that I'm back home and set up in the same place every time I'll investigate that more)
Once last time out it kept telling me my 2nd star was more than 45 degrees or something (I think it may have been over the Meridian or something) - in the end I powered the mount down and restarted it which fixed it - the old "have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?"
It def takes a bit of practice and a read of the manual for the hand controller a couple of times.
Andy