| One potential reason to avoid the Disetronic/Accu-Chek Spirit:
On both the H-TronPlus & D-TronPlus pumps, one of the error codes on the back of the pump is "Technical Inspection Due". After 2 years of use for each pump you are (or were) supposed to send the pump back to Disetronic for inspection & resetting of this timer. Well Disetronic just sent me a new pump for warranty replacement (my warranty expires in 10 days). On the back of the pump and included in a letter in the package was a notice that they changed the wording from "Technical Inspection Due" to "End of Use Time" on the back of the pump. "End of Use Time"????? No other explanation was given in the notice, just the change of wording. I thought this new wording was quite odd so I called Technical Support last night which confirmed that when this alarm triggers they will NOT reset the timer!!! Which means that if this policy also extends to the Accu-Chek Spirit, you are not buying a pump with a 4 year warranty, but a pump with only a 4 year life span!!!
Sure its nice to upgrade to a new pump every 4 years, but what if you lose your insurance? Even if your pump is physically OK they will force you to upgrade? He said they have NOT done any technical inspections in quite a few years (probably since the FDA Ban). My guess is that they can't inspect it for safety in light of the recalls and want to get the old pumps off the market to protect them from a liability standpoint and also to force people to buy a new pump every 4 years. When I asked him "WHY would you force me to buy a new pump when the timer on my D-Tron goes off?" His response was - "Don't you want newer technology?" I told him sure, we all do, but that I felt that my DtronPlus could do everything that the Spirit can. His response was that the Spirit holds 315 units of insulin and that the D-Tron only holds 300! The Spirit does 6million checks a day to make sure it's working within spec. I asked, doesnt the D-tron processor check itself throughout the day? He said "Not 6 million times!"
OMG I couldnt believe where this was going.
His remaining arguments were that the Spirit has 4 basal profiles, instead of two, and one additional bolus profile.
Personally I didnt care, considering that I had already bought the Minimed 722 yesterday, I didnt call them to have a pump wars debate, just clarification on their letter and subsequently why they just letting people's pumps die and not resetting them after their timer runs down - My plan was to always keep my Disetronic pumps as backups.
Personally I think they are being VERY shady, especially if this is indeed extended to the Spirit pump. Think of it this way...sure it's nice if your insurance will pay for a nice new pump every 4 years. What happens if for whatever reason you dont have insurance 4 years from now that will pay for a new one and the pump timer on your Spirit just went off? YOU ARE SCREWED! There may not be anything wrong with your pump, but Disetronic says that you cant use it anymore. I would rather have an old reliable that could work for 10 years with no bells and whistles rather than some new (yet apparently not so slick) pump that shuts itself down after 4 years, guaranteed never to work again. Perhaps there is an out clause in the case of the Spirit that allows them to reset the timer. Even so, is their word worth anything considering that they have retroactively decided not to reset the timers on pumps bought and paid for years ago?
It is hard to accept how far our old friend Disetronic has fallen. The way I see things, the Disetronic I knew and loved died when Roche laid off everybody in Minnesota, and morphed it into a new company with new people using the Disetronic name in Illinois. So sad.
Luckily all 4 of my Disetronic pump "back-ups" are warranty replacements with a full 2 years worth of time on them.  | 
