“Green is good! Dead batteries are no good!”

I recently had a faulty MacBook Pro battery replaced by FastMac and thought I would share my experience with you all. Was it good or was it bad? First let me explain the situation. On October 1st, 2008 I ordered a brand new replacement battery for my 15” MacBook Pro, one of the FastMac TruePower batteries. The batteries claim to have 68% more capacity than the “other” brand of Apple batteries. You can find out if it’s true by looking at a couple reviews here and here. For the short time that I used the battery it seemed to perform well. I cannot comment on the longevity of the battery though, as mine became inoperable after a few weeks of use. Why did my battery suddenly die? I made the mistake of taking the battery out of my MacBook Pro when the charge on the battery was at 36%. I left the battery sitting on my desk for about 2 weeks without charging it, causing the charge to slowly deplete. After that, the battery would no longer charge. Whoops.

On October 14th I contacted FastMac about my situation, explaining what had happened and that the battery was completely dead. I received a reply within the hour! They asked for the serial number, cycle count, charge capacity, some other general information from the System Profiler, and my order number. I received a follow up email within 20 minutes (or less) of sending my reply. The customer service rep told me that I had a couple options as they were out of stock of this particular model of battery. He told me I could either send the battery in and they would exchange it free of charge when the new shipment arrived, or if I was in a hurry they could ship me an Apple branded battery if I put down a $100 deposit that would be refunded when they received the old battery. I opted to send the old battery in and wait. Luckily the new shipment arrived before my package reached FastMac! It was immediate turnaround, I got my new battery in 3 days after sending my dead one in.

FastMac’s customer service is great: they are very fast, super nice, and easy to talk to. They listen to your problems and try to help you resolve them to the best of their abilities. I was really happy with the exchange and would recommend FastMac to anyone thinking about purchasing from them. Their products are great, I get 4 and a half – 5 hours of battery life on this new battery. On top of all that, they are also very reasonably priced.

Edit – 08/06/2009 – Rating changed from 4.5 stars to 3.5. Read here to find out why. http://www.knoxware.org/fastmac-battery-saga-pt-2/

FastMac Service gets a rating of 4.5 stars.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars