[The Mekon (John Briggs)]

Has anyone else had battery problems with their Stellarcat hand controller? My unit failed just over 12 months ago, batteries dead, Had to order the BR2325 batteries from USA as could not find in Aus. Now I find one of the little batteries has failed again, and I hardly use the hand controller. Also both times the failed battery had reversed polarity, ie, it had not degraded below 3v, but was reading -0.5V!
It does not help that you cannot turn these controllers off - so they must be drawing some current at all times.
Any information would be helpful