50 Dying batteries: Can they be shorted by cardboard if humid enough?

Most likely you bought old batteries.

Though you don't have to buy the most expensive to get a decent product, you do have to watch what you buy. I've bought some "cheap" batteries in my past and well - not only did they go dead fast, they leaked and caused some damage to the item. A bargain - it was not. The damage was realitively easy to correct - but I knew then not to buy "some" off brands.

Sounds like you guys got a bum shipment of batteries. I tend to agree with the other guys, it is highly doubtful the "shipping" box caused them to go dead. It would have to have been made damp and have good contact - top and bottom of cells.

You got ripped off.

--
Pierre Salinger Memorial Hook, Line & Sinker, June 2004

COOSN-266-06-25794

Report the seller to ebay's fraud department and have the idiot banned from ebay. If more people would report these scammers it might make it a better shopping experience.

Pretty extreme retribution toward someone whose product was 96% satisfactory and who was working with the buyer to resolve the problem. Perhaps you could share your Ebay id with the group so we could avoid doing business with you.

Do we "really" know the seller was working to solve the problem? OR just blowing off the buyer with a bunch of questions - he himself may have had no clue of? I'm not saying the seller wasn't trying to resolve the issue - but there is no way to prove it. It is as we've seen, a far stretch to imagine "cardboard shipping container" to short out batteries. OR some being dead as I believe was also the case.

In buying bulk, you're probably always going to have some defective product show up - I've had it happen to me. Actually, maybe the seller could have offered to reimburse some money for loss - but if "he" wasn't BSing the buyer, then he had about as much knowledge and chance for a refund - as the buyer seems to have had. Us trying to prove the case for the buyer OR seller - most likely won't make a damned bit of difference to the original supplier if the seller indeed relied on one.

When you factor in all the product in a "bulk" deal - you figure out your per piece cost and then see what you've lost. Is it worth dicking around trying to prove anything - or just toss in the trash and forget about it? Batteries in bulk are usually pretty cheap. At our local store, I can buy a

4 pack for a $1 - batteries I use often with no issues. OR I can buy a 12 pack for a $1, which I HAVE had issues with - leaking. Price doesn't always dictate quality, but sometimes - it does.

Just my 2 cents

I can buy an 8 pack for $1 here. They're good. The fake Energizer 12 per pack are total crap.

Yeah, that's a sure sign of crap IME.

Kind of reminds me when i bought a brick of what i thought was Duracell's AA's. after the first set of cells died in a short lived period, i noticed they said Duraking and had the same copper top casing and all.

--
"I\'m never wrong, once i thought i was, but was mistaken"
Real Programmers Do things like this.
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5

Radiosrfun said something like:

All such notions were mine from the start. The buyer isn't the one with the questions. He is just interested in what I discovered, and seems to be genuine in this, or so I think.

Your wording here is a little unclear to me, but I'll try to clear it up by saying that the seller *did* offer me a full refund. I didn't press him on this to see if it included shipping or not, but I think he would have.

*Plus*, he also without me asking to put in a small package of 16 AA's (some unknown brand) for free. I really just get the sense that this is a guy attempting relying on feedback and because his feedback has been almost entirely positive he simply was unaware of any issues.

Discussions are valuable when they instruct, so this seems like a worthwhile conversation. There's much here for me to learn about the consumer battery world, and I'll leave it at that.

--
Everythinginlifeisrealative.Apingpongballseemssmalluntilsomeoneramsitupyournose.

You don't need to bid on the item to report fraud, hell I've had a few crooks banned before their auction was over. All in the test equipment department.

Is there a reliable 3rd party battery reviewer/tester/etc. ? Perhaps consumer reports? Or does anyone else know of any?

I can tell you from a fairly thorough experiment of mine involving a Sony Walkman (analog audio casset tape) in the gym for nearly 2 hours every day, that AA-energizer (classic energizer, not e2 or anything else fancy) beat duracell's standard coppertop alkaline every single time. Big thorough experiement, but very narrowly focused on 2 brands, one device, and one "way" of using it (left on with no stops and restarts). But it was without deviation: E beat D in this narrow case.

But what of BJ's "Berkely & Jensen" OEM'd brand? Or any of the other million mumble names out there, probably 99% of them originating in asia. Any good ones people like?

--
Everythinginlifeisrealative.Apingpongballseemssmalluntilsomeoneramsitupyournose.

'Fake' Energisers ?

Do they have 'fake' written on them ?

Graham

They look the same as or similar to a good brand but they self destroy without even being used.

Yes, they do if you know how to read. Cheaper construction, lighter materials, paper labels instead of silk-screening. It all says "FAKE" loud and clear. US customs impounds tons of the crappy things every week or so.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Graham,

Maybe you've not seen them, though they may not say "Fake" in writing, they ARE "packaged" to look like a brand name. If you didn't look at them closely - you would buy them "assuming" they are "brand name". The ones I've seen, were IDENTICAL to Duracell.

There is a HUGE market out there for Knock-offs. Batteries, clothes, watches, CDs, you name it - there is probably one for it.