FastMac Battery Saga pt.2

Technically there’s not really a pt.1 to this post. For the sake of discussion we’ll refer to the review I posted on December 20th 2008 as part 1. I am having yet another issue with the FastMac batteries. In my review I praised FastMac for being very punctual and generally on the ball with everything.

After writing the review, some folks left comments expressing some concern about FastMac’s service. I defended FastMac at first. Sometimes one or two bad transactions happen. Now that I have done more research, my views have changed. The stories from the comments are starting to hit pretty close to home.

If you recall back in December 2008 when I wrote the review I just had a MacBook Pro battery replaced by FastMac because the one I had purchased in October of 2008 mysteriously died after only having it for two weeks. I thought at first the issue was due to me neglecting the battery while it sat on my desk with a 36% charge.  Now I think that was not the case at all. I firmly believe it is due to the batteries being cheaply made.  The reason I have changed my views are because I am currently in the process of replacing yet another FastMac Truepower battery.

After using the newly replaced battery for about 3 and a 1/2 months, things started to go sour again. Capacity started dwindling. I was no longer getting 4-5 hours of  battery life. My running time was around 2.5 hours, if I got lucky.  This was very concerning.  Such a large drop in capacity in such a short time shouldn’t happen with brand new batteries like this! I became a little concerned that maybe I would have to replace the battery soon.   Boy was I right!  Fast forward to June 2009. Two months after I started losing capacity.  The battery completely died on me one night. The battery would not respond to power or even pushing the charge indicator. There seemed to be no hope in bringing the thing back to life. The battery was completely dead for at least two straight days.  I let the battery sit in my MacBook Pro for a day while being plugged in.  The battery finally took charge after about 16 + hours in the MacBook Pro.

I was thoroughly excited! I have a working battery again, I thought. It’s ALIVE!!! ~ I was excited. Then things took yet another turn for the worst. The battery started swelling shortly after coming back to life. One of the cells died. Battery life dropped even more, by this time I was getting 45 – 20 minutes on the battery.  Great, I thought. Another FastMac battery gave it up to the ghost.

Bloated FastMac Battery.

Just like our commenter Neopium stated :

The battery health started to decline very rapidly (I lost 10% per week during a month). I’m now at 48% of battery life. The aluminum cover starts to unstick and the battery seems to inflate a little.

Everything Neopium said in his / her comment is exactly what has happened to my battery.  Great, another dead battery.  What’s the next step? Contact FastMac of course. Since these batteries have a 1 year warranty, I figured it’d be a breeze like last time. Wrong I was, very wrong indeed.  I shot off an e-mail to FastMac on June 20th 09.  I received a reply three days later. Not very fast, especially considering the last time I had an issue I received a response almost immediately.

FastMac told me their batteries were out of stock because they are moving their manufacturing facility from China to the US, they said it would take about three weeks before they recieved a shipment and could ship out my replacement.  I was fine with this information, I was out of town at the time anyways. I told them I would have the battery shipped out in a week.  On July 9th 2009, I shipped the defunct battery to FastMac. I notified them the battery had been shipped.  I didn’t receive any confirmation. After two weeks I contacted FastMac to see if they had received the battery and to see if there were and updates to the repair. I finally received a reply on the 25th of July.  FastMac told me I wouldn’t get my replacement until the end of August! This is of course after they told me 3 weeks wait time, 4 weeks beforehand.

I tried to ask why they  were delayed  and why it was going to be such a long wait. They never responded. I also asked them if I could just get a refund, a used battery, back stock battery, or something, anything at all…. Guess what? You guessed it, no response.  I explained that this was a real inconvenience and that I was told 4.5 weeks prior that I would have to wait for 3 weeks only.  I completely understand delays due to moving facilities, that’s understandable. To be honest though,  I am not buying it. Given their recent track record for screwing their customers over. I firmly believe that this is not an isolated case. The comments on my review speak for themselves, a quick google turns up many more issues with customer support, delays, back orders, etc. Their batteries are always out of stock. Now they won’t reply to e-mails during regular business hours. What gives?  This will be my fourth Truepower battery from FastMac. I am not a happy camper.  The last three have all died, lost cells, and life, shortly after receiving them. Did I mention the battery that I just sent only had 25 cycles on it?

I doubt I will be buying any more products from FastMac.  The batteries are flawed, they live a short life and they do not seem to be as structurally sound as Apples OEM battery. I have had better experience with stock batteries.  I don’t really know why I originally opted to get a battery from FastMac. I guess because they were $29.00 cheaper.  In the long run though, I guess you get what you pay for.

Aside from crap-tastic batteries. These t-shirts do look tempting.

FastMac, if you are reading this. I wear a L or XL – depending on brand of course.

My new rating for this experience is:

Rating:

I will update as things go from here on out. Comment about your experience if you’d like.

Tags: Apple, FastMac, Frustrations, Mac, Macbook

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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