New Meter, Thermocouple broken?

[rwgast_lowlevellogicdesin]

So I have had my eye on an extech 530 as my main meter for a while, but yesterday I went to home depot and picked up a Klein MM200 for about $50 bucks to use as a secondary meter when accuracy isn't as important. The major reason I bought this thing is because I am working on a digital solder station and I needed something capable of reading 1000 degrees +.

Last night is the first time I used the meter, I noticed the func button looked a little faded but everything else was packaged very nice, so I don't believe it was a return. The meter works just fine so far, except on the temperature setting... I plugged the thermocouple in so its negative prong was in the COM jack and its positive was in the V/uA/nA jack. The problem is the thing always reads in the 70's with or with out the thermocouple plugged in. I compared the temp reading to a .5% DS18B12 (i think thats the model) sensor, and it was only a few degrees off. I then stuck the tip of the Tcouple under my tongue no change, and just now I touched the shaft of a 30 Watt iron and still got a 77 degree reading. Does it sound like the meter/thermocouple may be faulty or is there something I am missing? I've never had a meter that did temp before, I tried hitting function on the temp setting, but it did nothing.

[Rerouter]

it soulds like the input to the meter is dodgy, that or the thermocouple is open circuit,

to test this, leave your probes in instead of a thermocouple and short them together it sould dramatically change the reading, if it does not its the meter input,