iamevilhomer

Bought my laptop in PCworld around seven months ago, £700. The battery now seems to be lasting no more than 45 minutes, less than half the time it did when new.
Just wondering if anyone has any experience of claiming for a battery under warranty or any other suggestions.
For the record its a Fujitsu amilo

Reality

Trying running the Laptop on the battery until it is completely flat then re-charging fully a couple of times - some batteries have "Memories" and if you only run them half down they only think they half half a life.

Must have been invented by some pessimistic sod

can't help on the warranty Issue - I suspect they will tell you to try this first anyway

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

You may just have to grit your teeth and buy a new battery - although in law you have a right to expect 'reasonable' performance from your laptop and its battery, I suspect you'd have a very hard time convincing PC World that they owe you a replacement if their store policy states otherwise.

You can read some very good info on how to look after and prolong a laptop battery here.

Here is where I bought my last laptop batteries from; my laptop is a Dell, and I was surprised to find that not only does the OEM battery have a higher capacity than the various 3rd party clones, but it was cheaper too.

Chrisgr31

I assume that the laptop comes with a one year warranty? On my first laptop (a Dell) the battery failed when it was 364 days old! I phoned Dell and the next day a courier arrived to deliver a new battery and collect the old one!

My guess is the battery should be covered for a year, so ask PCWorld for a new one!

Petem95

If its in the pcworld 'extended warranty period', ie over a year old then you wont get a new battery out of them under warranty - trust me, I know from experience! A friend of mine had the same problem, with a different brand.

They may say send it back to get checked out as it may be the 'charging circuit' which is faulty, but thats very unlikely.

sti-04!!

Should be covered with a 1 year warranty

Reality

Dell = Covered - no questions asked
PCWorld = **** off you're no longer a customer

You can try getting ****ty with them - but it might be better to just buy a new battery from the site above and join the rest of the "I wouldn't buy a cable from PCWorld if it was the last cable in the world" gang ;-)

GC8

From experience Id say that this will be a difficult issue to resolve. Different manufacturers provide a warranty of differing periods for their batteries; all regard them as a consumable. From memory Sony were the worst, warranting that it was indeed a battery (and only for a very short period of time) and little else.

If the battery had failed then PCWorld (the company that is, not some of the fools who work in their shops) would provide you with a replacement, even where the battery wasnt warranted by the manufacturer. In a circumstance such as this, where the battery still functions correctly, but not for as long as it did when new; then I think that it would be incorrect to suggest that it hasnt proved to be durable enough and a claim for a goodwill contribution would be a better bet.


Simon

Southern Guy

I work in this sort of field (NOT PC WORLD!!)

Anyway, Laptop normally come with 3 year warranties, but batteries are only ever covered for 1 year, I would go back to where you bought it and claim a new battery quickly.

Batteries should start having this effect for a while, but if you buy cheap expect a few problems along the way.

Remember you did them a favour buying it, they are there to give you a service which you paid for, make sure they sort you out and dont accept any **** from them. they will cough up for another one...

InvisibleMan

yeah should be 1Yr warranty. The dell ones here have a 1yr life to the DAY minus an hour or so! Several went at once & when i phoned they said they were out of warranty. "not for a hour im afraid" i said. the cheeky buggers

iamevilhomer

PMSL...they must have it programmed into the batteries!

Just checked on pcworld.com http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/sto...203&tabIndex=1

where they now have the laptop at £500 rather than the £700 i paid, and they have the battery down as "up to 1 hour" . It was definitely not this low when i purchased several months ago.
I fully charged the laptop today and used it as I normally would, a couple of excel docs open and a few explorer pages and it lasted for 35 minutes.
This is definitely a lot less than it was even a month ago.
Also, this is probably only going to get worse from here on in.
When i get some time later in the week i will call in and see what they say about the whole thing. Just bought a laser printer from them and a pc last year so they may offer a goodwill gesture.
Fingers crossed

Reality

Cross your fingers by all means....



Don't hold your breath .

Good Luck.

plonk

go to fujitsu site, they have had problems with the batteries and are doing a battery exchange on certain amilo models all numbers are on the site http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/suppo...nge/index.html

iamevilhomer

plonk, thanks for the link.
There is a reported problem in batteries of certain serial numbers, even claiming that they may overheat and actually cause a fire. they advise that if your battery is from that particular batch then you should stop use immediately and switch to ac power.
Upon checking, my battery is from this batch and it seems I qualify for an exchange. Seems simple enough, filled out the necessary forms online and apparantly a new battery is on its way

If this is the case I am actually surprised that I did not recieve anything in the post to notify me that the battery could potentially be a fire hazard. I bought from a large enough company who you would imagine keep accurate records of what is sold and to who.

Anyway, hoepfully I will be sorted out in the next week or so!

Taztaz

We use a lot of the fuji lifebook range at work and get the battery life problems reported quite often. I dont know if it applies to the laptop you have but most of the lifebook range have a feature to retrain the battery memory in the bios options. May be worth a look?

iamevilhomer

just letting you all know that today I recieved a brand new battery, totally free of charge

Plonk, thanks very much for the link, saved me a lot of hassle and expense
And cheers everyone else who offered constructive advice