Battery Replacement: Apple vs Dell
August 30, 2006
In the last few weeks Apple and Dell have both been placed in the inconvenient position of having to recall a pile of bad Sony batteries. Side note: how come Sony laptops haven’t had a similar recall, is their market share too small to justify it, or did they save good batteries for themselves? Back on topic, I have been in the unique position of personally being involved in both recalls. My Dell D810 has one of the bad batteries, I filled out the online form to get it replaced on Tuesday 8/15/06. There is also an Apple Mac Book Pro in my house which was affected, the online form to replace this one was filled out on Sunday 8/27/06.
The Apple replacement arrived yesterday, 8/29/06. This was a turn around of less than 3 days, especially impressive when considering one of those day, the request day, was a Sunday.
My Dell, however, is still patiently waiting for it’s replacement. Today is 16 days past when it was requested, so far that makes it more than 5x slower and counting…
Unrelated but furthering potential arguments, my Dell cost >$2300 and the Mac Book Pro cost <$2300. Both had 3 year warranties with educational discounts. Which computer, warranty, and commitment do you think was worth more?
Update:
Dell support contacted me related to this issue, after hours, because they had read this post. In response they have shipped me a new battery as opposed to the refurbs they are sending others. The support representative said my slow replacement was likely do to our institution being handled as a group. I appreciated this follow up and was able to understand their perspective.
As a quick note to Digg’rs and other people leaving comments, this is just a comparison of my experience with getting batteries replaced by two different companies in a short time period. Clearly experience for others may vary. Those who want to condemn me for speaking positively about Apple and negatively about Dell, realize I have both Macs and PCs represented in my life. I appreciate what both do for me.
Tags: apple, battery, battery recall, battery replacement, dell, laptop, mac, recall, sony
Comments
50 Responses to “Battery Replacement: Apple vs Dell”
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Yeah…and Dell advises to not use your current battery while you wait for the replacement!…which they estimate arriving within 30 days. pfft.
Not to be the devils advocate because frankly I’m not a big fan of Dell either but the battery on one of the office laptops at work had to be replaced and we had the replacement in 3 days. I suppose we just got lucky.
You may be right to play devil’s advocate. I’ve got a whopper of an update to this one. Watch back later today!
FYI, apparently it was supposed to be 30 days for the dell replacement of the battery. However, a memo was sent out in the NYC school system that really you should expect it to take 75 days for the turn around.
Isn’t Dell doing a much larger recall than Apple?
Your argument doesn’t take in that Apple has less recalls than Dell did.
Apple = 1.8 Million recalls
Dell = 4.2 Million recalls…
Soo.. Dell can’t give you something they don’t have on them.
The Macbook Pro battery recall is separate from Apple’s huge recall of Sony batteries, which only affected older PowerPC models, so the reason you got it so much faster is likely that they have a much smaller number of this particular recall to process.
Dell had at least a weeks headstart with their recall. They could have procured more batteries.
The relative size of the recalls shouldn’t be an issue. Consumer safety is at stake. If Dell had to, it should hire temp help to process and ship the replacements. It’s not like rocket science.
At heart, this is a Sony problem anyway. They should be paying the bills and making sure the replacements happen as rapidly as possible.
Just to clarify, the issue with the Macbook Pro batteries has nothing to do with them being dangerous, it was a quality matter where many of them were having problems holding a full charge.
This arguement really isn’t fair seeing as how Dell has 2.4 million more batteries to replace.
“Dell had at least a weeks headstart with their recall. They could have procured more batteries.” Yes it only takes 2 weeks to produce over 4 million batteries.
The Macbook Pro battery recall was announced around May 3rd. The Sony recall happened about 3 months later. The two are totally unrelated, so the comparison this guy is doing is pretty meaningless.
It doesn’t matter that Dell had more batteries to replace; they’re a commensurately larger company, and they do ALL their sales through orders. Apple does a fair number of retail sales, so this would probably actually tax their mail-order infrastructure more than if they did business like Dell.
There’s no apples to apples comparison available, really, but Dell should be a lot faster than ‘within 30 days’. It just shows that Dell has never had a recall plan in place to begin with. They’re just winging it this time.
In Australia you must take your Apple recalled battery & system along to a reseller.
Then the advised waiting time is 2-8 weeks…
Apple is pretty much forcing people to buy a new battery while they wait for a replacement. :|
I wish people would stop making excuses for Apple. If you zealots had it your way you’d spin this whole battery thing as a feature brought down by your fabulous god Steve Jerbs
I don’t have experience with the Apple recall, but here are some things that don’t help on the Dell side:
1) Serial number of the battery is in a spot that gets rubbed a lot, so mine was almost unreadable. Doubtful that this was by design, but it would have been nice if it had been designed to prevent this.
2) When you go to the recall web site, you get invalid certificate errors. Their certificate is signed by a CA that is not built into my browser, the latest Firefox. Don’t know about IE.
3) When entering the serial number from the battery, the form doesn’t offer any help distinguishing 0s from Os and Is from 1s or ls.
4) Form doesn’t do any check on the serial number. If there are check digits, they aren’t used. This has been confirmed through experimentation as reported on RISKs Digest.
5) If you make a typo on your serial number, the form tells you your battery does not need to be recalled. This is pretty much the same problem as 4) above, but they take the next step and make the default choice one that protects their cost, not your safety (yes, I know, the chances of getting hit by a vintage Model-T carrying drunk cheerleaders are slightly higher than the chances of a battery burning. Still, my battery gets hot and I’d like a cooler one).
I had my Dell replacement in 2 days from order. My PowerBook was also in need of a new battery. I sent in the form last Thursday the 24th and I have still yet to get anything from them.
Get off your Apple fanboyism and realize that it just is going to take time for both companies.
Im in the same position as Kildare. When i went to return my battery to the apple shop near me in Aus the guy said it would take one to two weeks to get a replacement. I complained that that was pretty unreasonable that i would have no battery for that long but eventually gave in. Much to my suprise i got a call later from the company to say the guy at the apple shop hadnt filled in the form correctly, and when i asked how long it was going to take i was told 6 - 8 weeks! If id been given the right information at the start i wouldnt have sent my battery back, or at least maybe tried to wait till they had more stock.
It’s because the MBP recall was much smaller than the 1.8 million PPC battery recall. They’re only receiving a few MBP requests at a time, so they’re shipping the batteries out almost immediately.
That’s why some people get it in 3 days, while others take weeks.
This is utterly ridiculous, and I’m annoyed to see it reach the front page of digg. While I’m glad that you got your apple replacement battery quickly, I was told that it could take about a month to get my new Apple battery. A sample of one does not imply great service, period.
I’m not knocking apple, but I get seriously annoyed when things like this blog post become “popular”. This is a huge recall, and getting a return in 3 days has got to be an outlier in the positive direction for Apple.
I haven’t had a windows computer for a few years, but I bought a Dell Inspiron in 2000. In 2001 they recalled the battery. It took 2 weeks to get the new battery, but they sent 2 batteries. When I called to ask about the second battery, they said that was cover my inconvenience. I thought that was really nice.
I got an iBook in 2004 and the battery was recalled 2 months later. I filled out a form online on a Friday and the battery was delivered the following Monday. So it’s kind of a toss-up as to which deal I liked better.
Sorry, I’m with Brian. There are so many conflicting reports that this is hardly indicative of how the recalls are going as a whole. I’ve read weblog entries that had the exact opposite experience you had.
How did this even get on Digg?
I have processed more than 20 dell battery replacements in the past two weeks. All batteries have arrived in 2 business days. We are replacing Laitude d600 series batteries, so maybe that is the reason.
Oddly, my Dell battery failed for no easily discernable reason, and it wasn’t one of the batteries on recall. I chatted with a tech support guy at 10pm Wednesday night (wait time before chatting approx 15 sec), and Friday morning at 10am I had my new battery–at no cost to me. DHL even came to pick up my return battery that same day.
With Dell, you can vote with your dollars and go somewhere else.
When Apple screws up (as they have), who else can you go to? That’s the exact reason why most sensible businesses don’t use them.
Well I ordered mine on July 26th and still haven’t gotten it from Apple. They said it could take up to 6 weeks. I am a super fan of Mac and even have a Mac Podcast for switchers http://www.typicalmacuser.com, but in this case they have missed the boat. I have lost valuable business time by not being able to use my battery. It’s a shame.
i had to get a dell battery for my work computer and it came in under 3 days.
I guess it may be that i’m with a bigger corporation, but still it was one of the fastest turnarounds I have seen.
My Dell replacement batteries: 3 days after submitting the info.
Some of you are right about these two particular batteries the writer has mentioned being part of the same recall. They ARE separate. Both companies have a ton of issues to deal with in respect to replacing batteries, and let’s not forget that Sony is a big part of the recall process too. I don’t think its fair to compare the two companies and how they’re handling their end of the recall just yet. Lets wait a few months and then start comparing, shall we? I’m not a fan of Dell, but I am of Apple - and I see no reason right now to fault either one or praise either one.
Get over every opportunity to make everything into a Mac vs. PC issue! Save it for the legitimate chances to do so!
I haven’t found any sort of service that beat the service that I have gotten from Dell. Considering how large their recal was vs apples, I hardly call it any sort of comparison.
http://www.designnews.com/article/CA6365970.html
For every asshole loser like you there are just as many people who had the EXACT opposite experience, with their Dell replacement batteries arriving soner than their Apple.
Rememeber, YOU DON’T MATTER. Your experiences are not typical. Your only chance of ever doing something good with your life is to commit suicide in such a way that your parents get the insurance money. They are DESPERATELY hoping this occurs by the way.
By the way…you write a fucking BLOG! Like a fucking 12 year old girl keeping a diary. How pathetifc IS your life? Seriously? Tell a girl youwrite a blog. No wonder you are and always will be a virign. How is it possible you HAVEDn’T killed yourself yet? You can’t POSSIBLY be happy with your current situation in life. And it WON’T get any better.
This guy is writing this as a consumer, not as a business man doing a full analysis.
To a consumer, dell suck ass. clear an simple.
[...] An interesting comparison of how the battery replacement is going from the customer point of view for both Apple and Dell.read more | digg story [...]
FYI, I placed the order for my Dell replacement on a Friday and it was at my doorstep on Tuesday morning, which if you consider weekends generally don’t count for shipping companies and take into effect processing times, the turnaround was 1 day (and it WAS shipped next day).
I’m in the same position, but have had the opposite results. For my Dell laptop my battery was in-hand in under 5 days (placed the order late Saturday evening). They say that it may take up to 20 days to be received. Our family store also uses Dell laptops for their business, they had 22 (I believe) batteries replaced, all arriving within 4-8 days. My Apple laptop is still awaiting its battery. I submitted the request to them about a week ago.
Seems like you’re just unfortunate, and that the times do vary. This is a pretty big recall, and to be completely fair I think both companies have made the process as simple and painless as possible.
I think that both Dell and Apple didn’t have to sell
2300$ computers without tested all the component…
So let’s see you compared different types of recalls (of different scales) and came to big conclusions based on a sample size of ONE. Using similar analysis, I guess one can conclude NO Mac users know how to do any numerical analysis such as simple statistics (don’t worry I have a sample size of one). I wonder if you would have posted this if you had the opposite experience which from the sound of it a bunch of people are having so there is statistically a good chance next time this happens, Apple might be slower. Oops, time for introspection. Wonder if you can do that. Why don’t think about the various comments written here and at digg and write a simple apology for being silly. Let’s see if you can be honest and not give Mac users a bad name.
I have a Dell D600. I ordered the replacement battery through the Dell replacement website and it was delivered just 2 or 3 days later. Several other folks in my office had the same experience. I guess what this tells you is that your jumped-to conclusion based on your single data point isn’t any more valid than if I claimed that Dell was getting all replacements out in 3 days based on my small sampling. If we both had a ThinkPad neither one of us would have any data points about battery recalls…
Filled out the Apple battery recall for for a 15 inch Powerbook over a week ago. Still waiting.
I filled out an applications for a 15″ powerbook battery about 1.5 weeks ago. Still no sign of the battery. I also called apple to see if they could track the product order # for me, and after waiting 1.5 hours.. NO JOKE on the phone, they said they could not track the status of a battery, even though i had the order number. I love my powerbook, but frankly, apple’s customer service is a JOKE. Good thing i dont need them. :)
Dell were aware of the ‘Fire” problem since mid-2005, and they were initially told by sony!! so no excuses there. My macbook pro battery arrived on the 2nd morning after the problem was reported (at 10pm!) Not bad.
Just as an aside, when you call the apple support number, they often answer on the first ring, usually by the third. Take note Orange mobile, NTL, carfone warehouse, PC World (Mastercare) & AOL.
^ Thats a bunch of bullshit. I love my apple and all, but apple does NOT pick up on the second or third ring… are u smoking crack? Everytime ive ever called them, it has taken at LEAST 30 minutes to get someone on the phone.. so please, dont blatantly lie. I love my apple and all, but dont be such a sheep follower. Customer service is customer service, and apple does not have very good customer service in my opinion.
Thie bigger question, which was alluded to in the original post but not answered is?
Why has SONY not had to recall any of their batteries?
Did they send the junk to their competitors?
[...] An interesting comparison of how the battery replacement is going from the customer point of view for both Apple and Dell.read more | digg story [...]
I personally do own a Dell laptop battery too. Though my model is not on the list, but it certainly does worry me if it may catches fire anytime….
[...] An interesting comparison of how the battery replacement is going from the customer point of view for both Apple and Dell.read more | digg story [...]
My gosh, you people are funny talking about how Dell is excused because they have more recalls. Compared to Apple, Dell is a huge. Being such a large company they should have the ability to send those batteries as fast, if not faster, than the laptops themselves. Its a matter of how highly the companies value you. Mac users are for life, so it makes sense that Apple holds is costumers in such high esteem.
Oh, and i am a Mac user. I had my MacBook’s battery replaced because of something unrelated and due to probably shipping. They were so cool about it. Though it was no a vital problem they had it send from an electronic company near by and i got it the next day.
legitimate business opportunities…
I found your blog through Big Yellow House! Im glad I did! Blessings….
[...] Battery replacement woes - The difference between good and bad customer service [...]