Thanks again guys...

The pics are all new and I do blank check before programming. I added the 1uF capacitor to the power pins (as per information on melabs.com) but it made no difference at all. This fix was for another problem, but customer support recommended that I gave it a try.

Erasing the chips first has no effect. The same chip will fail to program 10 times and then all of a sudden, it will work fine.. Very strange behavior. It seems to be related to the Pics though, not the programmer. I say that because some chips are just troublesome, and others (most) work on the first shot.

Does anyone know of a good low-cost commercial programmer that can program all of the Pics?