I have a smiliar problem with mine. One minute it works and the next it doesn't. If I left it alone for a little bit and came back it would be fine again. The battery was good, and I was considering that maybe it was this contact problem, but I discovered something interesting. It's a well known trick that you can see whether a IR remote is sending signals by looking at it with a video camera, as the IR LED will glow when seen through the viewfinder, and I discovered that in thoses times when it was not working, the LED was always transmitting whether a button was being pressed or not. Very strange, because it is definantely getting power.

In any event, David is graciously sending me a new one. Until then Hijack is coming in mighty handy, though I had to try several remotes before I found one that worked with it (a Kenwood, not surprisingly).