I have to start a new transmitter today. The one I was using only lasted 45 days, so Dexcom has to replace it. (Yay! I got 45 free days of transmitter use!)
I use my transmitters in order of start-by date. The next transmitter in my stash has a start-by date of August 8th. (Not the one I am starting today, but the next one is August 8th.)
Today is May 10th. If I use my current one for 90 days, then the next one will be started after it’s start-by date. If that next one goes bad, Dexcom won’t replace it. They will say it was started after the start-by date, so the 90 day warranty is no longer valid.
So my plan is to actually start the next one on August 7th. Even if my current one is working. That way, if the next one goes bad, Dexcom will still need to replace it!
So I am sacrificing a few days or weeks, just to make sure the next one is covered by the 90 day warranty.
Does that seem like that is worth doing? Is that a good plan?
Definitely start the G6 transmitter early enough that it will have a warranty. The one time I didn’t, it failed after about 2 weeks and when I called, Dexcom looked up the s/n, found out when it had been shipped, saw that it was started too late to be under warranty, and shrugged and said sorry.
@Eric Your analysis is spot on. I haven’t had to worry about the “start” date as most of my supplies have far enough out end of life warranties to not worry about it. That said, I organized my supplies of pods/CGMs/insulin so the farthest out EOL stuff is in the back. Will have to stuff your approach in my trivia data brain for future reference!
You must know this, but for readers who don’t, the G6 transmitter is not covered by warranty unless it is started within 5 (if I remember correctly) months of the date it was shipped to the patient. So failure before the expiration date on the box doesn’t mean it’s under warranty, and I got caught by this.
But I do not think Dexcom has a good way of tracking it, because people get their supplies from so many different sources. For example, if I get it from CVS, I doubt Dexcom would ever know when I picked it up from CVS.
“Uh…I got it…uh… yesterday. Yeah, that’s right. It was yesterday! Yep, I got it yesterday!”