My mom's System One Bi-PAP stopped working in the middle of the night when we were out-of-state- after 14 months of use. "Device inoperative" error message. If it turned on, it shut right back off. The DME has no out-of-state services. Phillips has a referral service that found me a similar unit about an hour away that I could rent for $25 a night. I was told her unit was under warranty. With Medicare you rent the unit for 13 months, then you own it. Therefore, the DME company was not receiving payment so I could not get reimbursed from them directly.
DME researched it and told me that Philliips does not reimburse for rental units. I contacted Phillips themselves and spoke to a supervisor who talked to others about our situation. Final answer is they do not reimburse for rental units during the warranty period nor do they cover rental units if the warranty is over and you need to send the machine to them to have it repaired. Luckily, the rental bill was only $60 but it could've been much more based on how long we were away.
FYI- if it does happen to you...
I was initially told my DME that we needed to wait to get back in town to have someone come to the house to verify it didn't work and to "troubleshoot" it. Then, the DME would contact Phillips for return authorization, then someone would come back to house with a replacement. I ended up talking to Phillips support directly. As soon as I said what the error was, she said it needed to be returned and gave me RGA to give to DME. This allowed us to have the tech come to the house with new unit the same day we returned to town.
I spent literally 2 hrs on the phone explaining the situation and trying to figure out a replacement and rental but it can be done!