Sunday, November 08, 2009

The Demise of a Ping

Fact: I never should have signed up for NaPoBloMo. I don't recall it being so hard to do last year.(maybe it was because everyone was doing it?) Be that as it may, this week(happily) has three days already carved in stone(what I shall blog about). Beyond that, though,the ideas are just periodic blips on the radar.


On Thursday, my Ping Remote let loose with a 2 minute shriek and promptly died, displaying an Error 1 just before doing so. Error 1= a call to customer service, and I did so. I should mention that I don't use the Ping consistently, and hadn't at all that day. I use all Lifescan meters, and as long as there's one of them around, I'll use that.(it's usually a One Touch Mini one)

Did you know that you can now order supplies 24/7, on Animas' website? If I didn't before, I sure do now- because for 30 minutes I listed to that endless recorded loop-de-insanity. And I am sure there are ways to cut that out but I don't know how. (I'm also sure that an endo's office could use that as a way to brainwash their D-patients-" You WILL exercise 30 minutes a day. You WILL exercise 30 minutes a day. You WILL exercise 30 minutes a day...") Figuring that the one Customer Service Person was taking an extra long coffee break, I just hung up. (surely if they were actually answering calls the wait time would not be 30+ minutes) Another peeve is, they don't give you any sort of estimated wait time(again, not really necessary if they don't get many simultaneous phone calls) This was about 3:30 pm, not in the middle of the night. So I called my rep and left her a message, thinking that maybe she could help, or at least tell me that the Error message was nothing bad. Well, 6 hours later still no callback from her, so I called Animas again & since it was after hours, they patched me through to someone & they said I needed the whole shebang replaced. Meter AND pump. I think it's a RF thing,each ping remote is specific for that pump? The pump, was fine to use solo but not the remote so they were replacing both of them. Next morning, the rep called me back(by that time, the problem had been taken care of). By Sat. morning, the replacements had arrived.(which I plan to hook up when the current reservoir runs out) Not the easiest of exchanges, there are a few things about the pump companies that is less then five star service.

2 comments:

meanderings said...

Is this what you've usually encountered when contacting Animas? I have my ping, I start in a couple of weeks. It will be my first pump.

HVS said...

Colleen-nope,generally they've been easy accessable & a short wait time to talk to someone..the reps are really excellent & will give you the shirt off their backs if you need it(no question is too dumb). I really don't know why I couldn't get ahold of someone that day. It's the first time Ive had a problem with them.Good luck on your pump start-I hope everything goes well & if you have any questions,feel free to ask me.The Ping is an awesome system, when it works.