Modem for WashSelect II

One of my modems went out on the WashSelect II.
Unitec shipped me a new one for $1495 (ouch !). A refurbished one costs $749.
What is up with these prices ? I was desperate (leaving town) so I ordered one.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, after replacing it I now can't dial-in using HyperTerminal. Apparently this is a know issue with the existing software version on my POS, so now they want $400 to send me the new s/w EPROM chip. They said I can replace it myself, but will loose everything.

Anyone else out there been through anything like this ?

As a matter of fact-YES!! Our car wash got a direct hit of lightning and I had to replace most of all of the inside guts of the Wash Select II for around $3000.00. Unitec was very good at sending me the parts overnight but now I have been asked to pay a $700.00 "CORE" charge for the modem!! I was never told and it was never written on the billing/shipping slip about returning the damaged modem so I would not have to pay this charge!! I had to get permission from insurance company to send it back and now I received a very unpleasant call from someone in their office telling me that since it was over 30 days that I would be held responsible for this "CORE" charge. This does not seem right since I was never informed about the charge to begin with!! I am hoping that my distributor can work something out with them. This is outrageous to me!!

I have not had to deal with a bad modem yet, but I installed a second WS2 last January and I am having trouble dialing into it ( using Hyperterminal ). Sometimes it rings once and then gets silent. My other WS2, on a different line is much faster and always connects. During the periods when I cannot dial into the "new" WS2 the card reader can dial out. I am trying to sort out whether or not it is a WS2 issue or a phone line issue. I switched the phone lines on the 2 units for a couple weeks, and the issue seemed to go away. Now I have switched them back and have not had a problem for a month. But the connection problem was a sporadic problem from the beginning.

Talking with Unitec tech-support, there are known Hyperterminal issues with modems whose serial# begins with a 6 (new) as opposed to 3 (old), and the old EPROM chip.
In my case, with the new modem on the old POS s/w. I was able to dial-in only once, but all the characters were messed up. This also stopped the modem from dialing out. After resetting the POS, I haven't tried to dial-in again.
I switched modems over and it worked fine, so I eliminated the phone-line.
Should these modems cost so much ? Has anyone looked into an alternative ?