I am told it could be because of the type of Solder used on the board. It was a new type required for some law, but wasnt very good. They have since gotten better solder. Usually even if out of warranty, if RTI discovers internally that the problem was not due to neglect but on their end (manufacturing wise), they will generally do it for free. you would just have to take care of either shipping costs and/or programming to upload your program back onto the new board. I have to say, RTI is great like that. We've returned quite a few a while back for this issue, and only the "dropped" remotes got charged.