I think the simplest thing to do is use the remote until you have 1 bar left then when you place it in the charger, lay another remote on top of it to weight it down. They will work for several days on one charge and hopefully you don't have to do this too many times before Logitech replaces it. (Just call them and order a replacement if you have charging issues, don't worry about messing with the charging base trying to fix it.)

I am assuming that there are a lot of old 880's floating around wth the old charging base and this has been a problem for quite some time (I called them and replaced my base about a year ago and it has worked perfectly ever since). Fortunately Logitech acknowledges the problem and is replacing the base at no charge.