Bad Apple Battery...Again

The battery on my G4 PowerBook was one of those Sony-made deals Apple has recalled. I put the appropriate info into the Battery Exchange section of the Apple Support site some four weeks or more ago, and I got the exchange battery today. The only problem is that the thing wouldn’t fit! The metal casing the battery resides on and that forms part of the PowerBook’s shell seemed slightly warped, producing a hard and poor fit.

I knew from several Internet forums that other Apple users had seen the same thing, and that’s partly what keyed me to look for this problem.

I called Apple Care; and after getting routed through Support to a Product Care Specialist in Austin, I explained to her the problem. She’s sending me a new battery using DHL Overnight; so, it will get here fast once shipped but won’t ship for another 10 days. To ensure I send both batteries back to them, they made me give them a credit card number, which I did without complaint. If they charge the card and I’ve followed their instructions, I’ll complain then!

This gets back again to the problems Apple continues to have with their quality control. Some things will always get through, but the fact I knew the problem existed from the comments of others suggests this is not an isolated problem. Seems like Apple would have been looking at these batteries very closely. One glance at the malformed batteries by anyone who knows PowerBook batteries would have told them in an instant that something was wrong.