Insulin Pumps, Warranty's and concerns

[Mark Riddell]

I attended the clinic yesterday and was advised that my Animas pump is 4 years old and out of warranty in June this year. I am not getting a replacement until this one breaks, and even then after 8 years of being on a pump the funding will need to be applied for again. I am concerned here for an number of reasons, firstly the nurse related the warranty to that of a car and many cars run outside of warranty. I then stated but car are not there to keep you alive whereeas the pump is.

I also asked the fundemental question of what happens when the pump malfunctions and delivers more insulin by accident and god forbid i die in my sleep - remember the pump will only raise alarms when it stops putting in insulin. There is no alarm fuction for over delivery. I asked her who was liable in that event. She did not know the answer. So whp do i sue - the PCT or Animas. Are other pumpers having the same probs with their PCT's????

 

[AMBrennan]

I'm not an expert, but I think you might have misunderstood the concept of warranty: As long as the product is under warranty the manufacturer has to pay for reasonable repairs; it doesn't necessarily mean that the product will be unreliable after warranty expires (it's merely the point after which the burden of proof is transferred from the manufacturer to the customer).

What you are thinking about is the device's "use by date" - this may coincide with the end of warranty, and if it does then your PCT is obviously wrong to not replace the device.

 

[jopar]

In the past Clinic's did replace pumps as soon as the warranty expired and it's only in recent years that some clinics have decided to wait until pump fail in some manner before replacing them..

I would ask you clinic if your pump goes belly up how long will it take to replace?

If you are unhappy about this I would contact www.input.me.uk they will be able to help you on sorting this out..

As to your concerns about over dosing, well you've got an Animas and I haven't heard of any over dosing problems with Animas . There is only one company that had problems with an older now discontined pump!

A lot of Americans due to having to either self-fund or pay a large portion of the cost of their insulin pump, will use their pump past the warrenty expirey, hence why the Accu-chek spirit pump isn't pipular over there even though it has a 6 year warranty but it does have a factory set time counter, once it's hit the expiry date it stops working! And has to be rest by Rouche!

Rouche haven't released the new Combo pump there, even though this doesn't have a pre-set warranty counter on it.. (but it can bet set up though)