Harmony Remotes

[Johnl1024]

Hello,

I have had my remote for 12 1/2 month, and it has stopped charging. I have tried everything, new battery, new charging base, etc... Nothing seems to work, and since my remote is conveniently 15 days out of warranty, support told me I would have to purchase a new one. I paid $250 for a remote control that’s useless now, I'm not spending that again, I have lost all faith in Logitech products.

Has anyone had a similar problem, that they found a solution for? 

Sorry for the ramble, I'm a bit upset.

[plav]

Mine just stopped as well. I reported the problem to support last night - one year and four days after purchase. Haven't heard from them yet, although it's been some hours less than the "one business day" expectation they set.

I'll report here when I know more. In the meantime, I'm not happy but I'll give Logitech the opportunity to do the right thing.

[plav]

It's been more than one business day since I contacted support. Yes, I have attempted to contact them again. Thus far, nothing since their inital automated response containing an incident number.

The remote's battery has gone completely dead.

Last night I spent some time looking around this forum and it seems that a great many writers are experiencing the same 'stopped charging' situation. I learned that the warranty period is a year here in the States but two years in Europe - for the same device. I further learned that it's kind of rare for Logitech to honor warranties that are even the slightest bit expired. (In my case that's four days.)

It doesn't look good.

[plav]

A support rep sent a response this afternoon.

The rep acknowledged the delayed response and asked a series of questions about the problem. The rep apologized for the fact that the questions were very similar to the ones I answered as part of the original trouble report. And they were, but perhaps a bit more detailed.

I carefully reformatted the email to clean up unfortunate line wrapping and stuff like that, and went on to answer the questions.

A short time later I received another message advising me that the remote was determined to be defective and would be replaced.

According to the subject line, the RMA is described as "pending approval". Not sure what that means - the message clearly said they "will be replacing" the remote.

Also, they pretty clearly said that my "original defective unit" has been "disabled from our system" rendering it useless. That makes sense to me. I've read plenty of buyer beware warnings about scammers selling busted, disabled units online. In this case, since it won't charge it's more or less a brick. I may introduce it to my drill press. :-)

Earlier I said the situation didn't look good. It looks a lot better now.

More when I know more.

[plav]

It's been several days since my last follow-up. I've just asked Logitech to close the incident. Here's the rest of the story.

After waiting "two business days" for my tracking number I emailed tech support. They replied that it had been sent, that it might have gotten caught in my spam filtering, and included the tracking information. My email address receives several hundreds messages every day so it's perfectly possible that it may have slipped through, however documented instances of that happening are kinda rare. Logitech's messages DO look spammy, from a machine's point of view. But benefit of the doubt and all that. The tracking number said the replacement remote was on its way.

It arrived in yesterday's UPS delivery, a day early. I received what appeared to be a complete, new retail boxed unit, not a refurb. It may have been NOS, because the charger cradle did not have the switch to adjust the LED brightness. (My original didn't either.) I'm not sure which is newer - with or without the switch. I inserted the battery - more on that in a minute - and dropped the unit into the cradle. It rewarded me with the beep to indicate it was charging.

After about an hour I used the online software to update the new remote with my old programming, per their instructions. The procedure was easy, quick and accurate.

Additional Possibly-Interesting Information

Before I put the new battery into the new unit I figured it'd be worth trying it in the one that stopped charging. LIBs have inherent stability issues and contain active management circuitry that can disable a cell. Wouldn't it be funny if it were a simple battery failure that caused Logitech to replace a perfectly good remote? I might have had an opportunity to help them devise better diagnostics. Well, the new battery behaved the same as the old. Since I measured the correct voltage from the charging cradle I've gotta conclude that the old remote's toast.

The old battery, BTW, has a story of its own. The last steps of Logitech's diagnostic left the battery out of the remote and I never bothered to put it back. Over a period of days the plastic case of  the battery swelled and now has an unmistakable bulge. According to my caliper, the thickness of the edge with the contacts is 0.280 inches while the bulge in the middle of the case is 0.364 inches. Considering that the new battery is very flat, I'd call 0.084 inches of variance "significant". Since the bulge hasn't grown in the past couple of days I don't think it presents a danger; I think the cells are venting as designed.

The battery itself - both old and new - is labeled "Limited charge voltage 4.2V." The charger cradle is specified at 5.5VDC, and that's what I've measured. Not sure if that matters. I need to learn more... Maybe the charging circuitry is strained by that and could stand being lowered a bit to enhance its longevity, I dunno.

Finally, through the battery case of the old battery it's possible to just barely see shadows of other glyphs. I threw the thing on a scanner bed and pulled the result into Photoshop. Image enhancement produced no cryptic message, it appears to be the part number of the OEM.

If there's interest I'll find someplace to make these images available. If not [shrug] I won't bother.

And as for introducing the old remote to my drill press, I think I'll just hold onto it for parts. I had a Harmony remote before that failed (WAY out of warranty - no replacement from Logitech that time) because of a few physical buttons. Channel surfing just wore 'em out. I programmed soft buttons to take over the functionality of the failures. So you never know - having some spare parts might prove handy some day. These are some pricey little mofos, after all.

Conclusion

I'm pleased that Logitech decided to replace my remote which was technically out of warranty - four lousy days. I was worried, based on other comments found here and in other places, that they would take a hard line and leave me hangin'. Once underway, time spent in shipping was less than I figured it would be. Updating the programming for the new unit was fast and accurate.

To those of you having similar difficulties - good luck! I hope your experience is closer to mine than some of the stories I've seen.

[sasquatch77]

Your problem sounds just like mine.

I contacted support today, I hope to get this resolved very soon.  My wife and I are lost without it.

Chad

[plav]

So, Chad, how did you make out with that?