MEI bill acceptor issue

[br549autosales]

My MEI bill acceptor stopped working last week, it would cycle, green light LED flashing when I open the door & it was showing installed in auto configuration. Tried cleaning it but still would not work. Put in another MEI from one of my other machines & it worked just fine
 Monday it stopped taking bills again & the yellow bezel was not lit. This is on a S2000 5 reel machine. Any idea what I can tru next & are all of these MEI bill acceptors just a pain in the ass to be using or am I just that unlucky?

[rickhunter]

You are just unlucky.  I haven't had to replace an MEI on any of my machines with them.  You may just need to get them re-flashed.

[br549autosales]

So I'll need to get it re flashed even though it was working previously? What causes a working MEI to have this problem so I don't go thru it again?

[sixcardmark]

It could be the interface board the head locks into.  It just slides out.  Try cleaning the contacts on both ends and/or swapping it with another one.  Mei's are very reliable but I believe that board is the weakest link. I had one stop working yesterday.

[rickhunter]

I've heard that for whatever reason (surges, static, etc), the flash gets corrupted sometimes on these heads (thought rare, I have seen it happen to a friend of mine once). Mark is also right in that the interface boards go bad, I've had that happen to me a couple of times.