I've had the new pods for about a week now, and so far, things are not really great. I put on my first pod with no problem, and it worked fine. When I went to change it, the new pod went through the priming process and then went into the continuous beep of a dead pod. I never even removed the needle cover. I primed a new pod and had it on about an hour when I got an occlusion alarm. At this point, I got out the old PDM and put on an old-style pod because I was heading to the beach the next day and at the rate I was burning through the new pods, I just didn't want to mess with them. Last night, it was time to change pods, so I switched back to the new ones (I still have about two boxes of the old ones). I went through the priming process, and again got the beep of death before I could even put the pod on. Hopefully, it's just a coincidence that I've gotten one hour of use out of the last three new pods I've tried, but I'm back to an old one at least until the next change. Insulet customer support says the two priming failures in a row are unusual. I don't remember ever having one with the old pods, but maybe I did somewhere along the way. Of course, they take no responsibility for occlusions (although they are replacing that pod). To be fair, my wife did bump the occluded pod not long before it went out, so that could have been a factor. At any rate, my experience so far isn't that great.
Disappointed to hear that, Jim… Aside from those things have you enjoyed the new smaller size??
Wow, bad luck. Sorry to hear that's happening. I know one other person that's been on the new one's for a few weeks and has not had one failure yet. Sounds like you got a bad box. I'd call Insulet ASAP.
I've never actually had priming failures with a pod. I have gotten the new ones yet though. By chance, if I may ask, are you in the States?
Sounds to me like you got a bad batch. I have been using the new pods for 2 months now and have had no failures after priming and 2 occlusions.
Good to hear others have not had such problems. The new size is great, though really I never thought that much about the old ones, and I don't think that much about the new ones when they're on. But the new ones are considerably smaller, even more than I had imagined after seeing pictures. I am in the US and get my pods through Edgepark. I was also out of warranty, which makes a difference.
Not a great start for sure. Hopefully you get them all out of your system up front, lol. I did get my first priming error last week. I hope its a strange coincidence. PLease keep us informed, and hopefully things get better from here. Not sure when we wll see the new ones in canada - hopefully soon but I won’t hold my breath.
It sounds like a period 1.5 years after I started with OmniPod [I was among the first] -- there was suddenly a spike in failure rates and some double-talk while they figured things out (I think). There weren't as many people on forums at that point, but I recall a few had the same issue with their 'new batch' and others were fine. Apparently at some point it came out that a small change to production method caused unexpected issues. I was near quitting OmniPod but it's been smooth sailing since [seems that was 5 years ago or more??]. Glad I stayed.
Hope this clears up for you. Even with draining what you can from a bad pump, wasting insulin adds to the annoyance.
Colin, do you have any tips on how to get insulin out of a bad pump? I once read a pretty thorough explanation on here and couldn't follow.
Jim, wishing you better luck!
I just suck it out with the syringe for the new pod. I'm not sure if it matters, but I hold the pod with the fill hole at the bottom. I've had the insulin come out easily, and I've had it be so difficult that I just gave up. It depends on how loose the plunger in the reservoir is. Most times it moves easily, and extracting the insulin is no problem. But I've also had it be impossible to extract.
ah, thank you.
Yeah cat -- I've had the same experience as Jim. If there is a formal method I don't know what it is. I just put the needle back in, invert the pod (adhesive side down) and pull the plunger. If there is resistance I might pull the needle and insert again. Some air bubbles will come in but once it all settles I'll often get 2/3 or more of what was put in.
yeah, I get 2/3 on a good day! usually it's about 1/3. i'll try tipping it different ways and still haven't found a trick to it
I am on my second box of the new pods and have had 6 fails so far. Tech support is real good about replacing them, but this is starting to worry me, (6 out of about 15)have failed.
What worries me is the insulin loss.
Wow, that’s a pretty high incidence. I really hope you just got two bad boxes…
Makes me wonder about the 4 boxes I received Friday..of course I wont know until they get off their butt and send me the PDM
I have had three pod failures since my original post -- two priming failures and one occlusion that was literally minutes after I had put that pod on. Customer support says the priming process is different for the new pods. They have to touch the PDM while they are priming and be to the right of it, I believe. I'm back on an old pod for now and have received six replacement new pods. I'm one-for-seven so far.
The only time in 4 years I've had back to back failures is when using refrigerated insulin. Hasn't happened ever to me at room temperature.
That stinks! I have been using the new pods since March 15th and except for 2 occlusions I have not had a single problem with them. So, it's not all of them. Sorry you had such a bad run!
perhaps these failures are the real reason that us old users haven't been given the new pods yet. It could be they want to iron out all the bugs before full distribution.