Customer Reviews

Accu-Chek Complete Diabetes Monitoring Kit - 1 ea

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I recently purchased this device after reviewing various reviews of blood glucose meters available on the market. I purchased the Accu-Chek Aviva due to it's reasonable cost, recent make, small size, efficiency of use, ability to take blood from places other than the finger, and requirement for only a very small blood sample.

Overall, I am impressed with the device except one important thing. Despite numerous tries I could not draw enough blood from locations on my arm and leg that would meet the unit's minimum blood sample size requirement. I used the longest lancet setting and tried several times but received error messages on all tries with a code that tells you that you haven't used enough blood. This could very well be a problem for many meters but since this is my first, I find this fustrating that I have to go back to the standard finger prick method.

This meter is a vehicle to sell test strips (like cheap printers are a vehicle to sell ink), so it's no big surprise that you can get it for virtually nothing. In fact it was on sale recently at Walgreens for $9.99 with a coupon inside for a full refund of what you spent for up to about $40-$50, so you can get the meter for salestax and 1 oz postage. The strips on the other hand cost $0.50 - $1+ each...

Now, my drug plan pays 100% for strips, but when I got out of the hospital after surviving the results of undiagnosed untreated runaway diabetes (hyperosmolar coma and kidney failure) practically the only thing I had to pay for myself was the diabetes education program. Perhaps that's why they threw in the meter, the infrared cable and more than enough strips to cover what they billed me, if only I had had to pay for strips.

As a result I found out some nasty things about this meter. Each box of strips comes with a dongle that you must plug into the meter, supposedly to program the meter to match changes in the strip but actually to force you to buy the next box whether you need to or not. If it is on or past the date on the dongle the meter will not only refuse to work with any strips you have remaining, it will refuse to give you access to any prior results you have stored in the meter. And, no, changing the nominal date will not fool the meter.

The lancet "pen" in the kit is also designed to sell you supplies, in this case the lancet cartridges. It is all too easy to click past an unused lancet, and then you have to throw it away unused, because there is no way to go back -- the pen destroys the cartridge by use, click-by or removal.

All those "Err" messages that the other reviewer got for insufficient blood also resulted in thrown-away strips. It happens not only if you don't draw enough blood, but also if you jump the gun and feed the meter the blood while it's still showing the dongle's version number. Now, maybe this was unavoidable. But given the other behavior of the meter and lancet pen that refuses to respect the patient's judgement in their eagerness to obsolete supplies, I'm deeply suspicious.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of this meter, also. Since I'm not paying I haven't hesitated to try two or three strips in a row when I got an anomalous, or more honestly, a disappointing, result, and 60-point swings in the result (American style; Canadians and Euros have a different scale hardwired in -- and you can't switch: I happened to pick up a Canadian meter and Roche helpfully instructed that I should throw it away and buy another).

And what can I say about holding your past results hostage to buying a new dongle?

Well, I say don't buy this meter. No need to encourage Med supply companies to disrespect us.

Errata -- I've discovered you can get access to past results by turning on the meter with no dongle (a/k/a coding chip) installed. I didn't see that documented anywhere, but I did discover it...