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Fed up with accu-chek..

E

ebony321

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At first the accu-chek careline was helpful, friendly and a pleasure to call..

I've been having problems with my meter, it first happened a few months ago, and once in a blue moon, now its every single time i use a pot of strips.

When i get near to the end of a pot of strips, my meter say's they are all bad. as in gives me the error message for a 'bad strip'..

When i first rang about the problem, they questioned me about how i store them, When i get them from the pharmacy they go straight in a drawer. When i open them they go straight in the carry case, they stay there until the pot is empty. they aren't in extreme heat, or sunlight or dampness. They said they assume they might be a dud pot and to see how it goes..

I've rang them a further 3 times and gotten the same vague answer... I'm at the end of my tether. There is clearly something wrong with my meter.

From about 4 weeks ago i have saved every pot that has done this, i've put the chip in the tub and put it aside, i now have 6 pots lined up all with anywhere from 4-15 strips that i can't use and will have wasted because my meter won't accept them.

I hate wasting stuff, especially something so precious as strips. But accu-chek just won't do anything about it.

soooo, any ideas on why my meter's doing this? or how can i convince accu-chek to do something about it?
 
Sounds very strange this ebony, I would have thought if your meter was at fault it would give a bad reading all the time regardless of the age of how long the strips have been used for, unless the strip pots are being left open for too long each time they are used as I believe they can degrade when open to air for any length of time. Do you take a strip out and close the pot immediately or do you leave the pot open while you test your bg?

Thats all I can think of :?
 
I still get the BSD come up on the meter every 2 weeks roughley. I haven't got round to phoning Accu chek yet for a replacement as I know that all my data will be lost when I change over to a new one. I've not bothered with the SmartPix yet.

Regarding your problem,.... I would see if the Aviva teststrips work ok in another Accu chek meter. If they do, then it's the Combo meter that's at fault and you should be able to get a replacement FOC. I would just ask the guy who takes the orders for sets over the phone to send you a replacement as you keep getting error messages for no obvious reason.
 
Hi Ebony

Funny you should say that but James has had a few errors lately with his Accu check Expert. I do remember when having a meeting with a rep regarding the Keto strips that she did ask if any of us use the control solution every time we use a new pot of sticks, and everyone said no, which she said that we should ALWAYS do a control solution test before each new pot. I got to admit we have never done this and have not even after she said we should.

Whether this has something to do with the error readings, I don't know. Accu Check may even ask you if you do this control solution test when you speak to them?

Hope this helps
 
We've been having intermittent problems with our Accu-Chek Nano test meter too. It isn't always at the end of a pot of strips like yours though. However once it was at the end of a pot of strips. I ended up having to go and buy a new test meter at Tesco in the early hours of the morning because the meter said the strips were out of date when they weren't and I didn't have another box of strips (were awaiting pick up from the GP the next day). However we regularly have a strip that errors on us, sometimes we're going through about 4 strips before we can get a result.
 
My accu-chek mobile does it too. Part way through a casette of strips, which are stored inside the meter, it says 'cassette faulty, change cassette' or words to that effect. No idea why and I haven't followed it up. But as the accu-chek mobile strips are more expensive than most and my GP talked the PCT into allowing them to be prescribed for me, it's a bit sucky if only half of them work. :x
 
Has anybody actually contacted Accuchek about these faults at odd times??

I report religously every sinegle problems I have had with anything from accuchek and have found thei service to me exceptionally good....however....becuase I will NOT take any fault of any kind without reporting it (Mainly because of the NHS paying for these faults, and for my health!!!!!)...I just firmly believe that they should replace any faulty equipment...and for me personally they always have....
 

I hadn't thought about reporting them before, but I shall now. They owe me (the NHS, that is) a couple of cassettes.
 
I would ask to speak to your rep, if you don't know who this is then cutomer services will know by which hospital you attend.. (we've all got one if we got a pump) and I would also speak to your DSN concerning this problem...

I would also ask your DSN for a Nano meter as you should always have a back up meter, and these take the same strips as our Combo meters, so you can check if the strip is the problem or the meter!

I'm suprised it's doing this on very tub, as the Combo meter doesn't have the ability to count strips from a tub, Roche only do two meters that do, The compact plus and the new Mobile, the only difference between these meters is the drum for them...

With my meter I've had a couple times where it's told me that I had a duff strip, but find that taking the strip out and replacing it normally resolves the prorblem, and I know this sounds daft but what batteries are you using, the standard or the lithium... As it's possible that you may be near the end of the battery life, the standard's to to deplete very quickly and then die very quickly, where the lithium's they tend to take a long time in the dying process so powers the main parts of the meter but isn't impressed when you stick in the test strip, and the power surge when the strip hit the contectors makes the meter unhappy giving the wrong signal..
 
hi all,

thanks for your replies.

I do close the pot everytime i use it, that's why i find it so odd that it happens, i can't think of a reason why it would do it only towards the end of a pot.

I don't test with solution either, i probably should! i'll call them tomorrow as i need to order some things anyway and get some solution..

I also haven't bothered with the smart pix yet, my DN has one and i see her every few months so she pulls it all up for me. But i'm not too fussed about losing data if it means it'll stop doing this lol.

When it first happened i change the battery(lithium), i took the chip out, It gives me the bad strip error after i've put the blood sample on so i can't re-try, sometimes if i persevere it will eventually give me a reading, but this can be after 6/7 strips so i always try a few but then give up and use a new pot. I started to store the dud pots incase accu-chek needs anything but they don't seem to be that bothered.

I have a spare meter but it's not an accu-chek one, but i think it's a good idea if i get a meter that takes the same strips so i'll ask my DN.

If they are useless on the phone again i will ask my DN to contact the rep, or if she will give me her number so i can contact her myself.

After a few bad experiences in the past from running out of diabetes things, i alwats re-order when i'm half way through my current supply, this way by time i get it a week later i'm always a week supply ahead of myself. This is because i can be terribly forgetful so it's taken me a while to get into that routine haha! but it's especially irritating if you run out due to the product!

Thanks again for your replies, i shall call accu-chek again, failing this i will get in touch with my rep see if she can sort something out.

 
You're not miss a lot with not using the smart pix, basically it rubbish, one of the worst BG software I've used... It opens up in explorer and the only reports you can generate are a day, a week, 2, 3, 3 etc, you can print off the information but can't save it to file which I found a complete pain more so when the weeks that you could load up from the meter isn't equal to the pumps upload...

The 360 software does look a lot better, but I had to buy a new laptop with a win7 64 bit OS, I did have it up and running using a virtual PC on my laptop, but couldn't resolve the screen resolution that I had which made it difficult to navigate :evil: I seen the other day that they now have a version that runs on the Win7 but I've got a nasty feeling that you've got to still be running a 32bit system though as this is the only version that it will run on Vista...
 
It doesn't look like i'm missing out on anything when i've seen it, my DN uses it to look at what boluses i use and my basal rate changes, and my spilt of basal and bolus. She said i could get one from accu-chek but i havent bothered as i'm happy with what my meter tells me to be honest.

I wasn't aware there was any other option, but i don't use windows 7 yet, my laptop is still alive so no need ot upgrade yet :lol:
 
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