Catherine, Your comments are advisable, but I think a bit overly reactionary. I've only seen one negative comment regarding another person's experience a year ago. As I mentioned, the procedure is straightforward. The batteries are pretty easily accessed in the rear, the main problem being that they need to be soldered. When I worked for the aluminum company, on several occasions I had an electrician replace the batteries, rather than being without the unit for weeks while it was being serviced by TSI for an exorbitant price. I've opened the unit myself, and if one is careful, there is no reason to incur any damage. Batteries Plus routinely opens equipment to install batteries as part of their normal business. They do the same thing with devices such as electric shavers, which have to have a group of battery cells soldered inside and then the shaver is re-assembled. This is much the same as what they would need to do with an Optacon. I also had them put new batteries in the Optacon II battery pack, which is a lot more problematical. They had to tear the battery pack apart, replace the cells, and hot-glue it back together. This is of course necessary since there are no Optacon II battery packs being manufactured; anything out there now will probably have cells that are at least ten years old. The only thing I did with my Optacon R1D's and an R1C is explain to the tech how to disassemble the case and to be careful in routing the camera cable back into the groove in the lower right corner. Yes, if it could benefit from a cleaning etc., then a trip to an Optacon repairer would be worthwhile. But, for a simple battery replacement, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Batteries Plus is as they have done at least five for me as well as three or four others for friends of mine. Take my advice, I don't use it anyway Steve Lansing, Mi To unsubscribe at any time, just send a message to: optacon-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" (without the quotes) in the message subject. Tell your friends about the list. They can subscribe by sending a message to: optacon-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the message subject.