Saturday - June 18, 2011

Bait & Switch

I needed a new battery for our cordless phone. I looked in the local stores but to no avail. To the cloud!

Turns out our phone needs one of those 3.6v 3AA batteries with the wire and a connector. No problem. Found what I wanted at Amazon, an Energizer ER-P240 NiMH 1000mAh jobbo for $10 that’s a good bit stronger than the original 800mAh Asian POS battery. Let’s see if Google can find me a better price. It did.

I got a pair of them from the first company that comes up. $5.95 each, free shipping. Went to the web site. It says Energizer ER-P240. It says “famous brands for less”. The picture wasn’t of that brand of batteries, but I went through their site and they seemed to use that picture for all the 3AA batteries they sell. I ordered. That was Monday. What came in the mail was a pair of no brand, 600mAh nickle cadmium battery packs, loose in an envelope. Say what? Old tech, unpackaged, and unbranded, these aren’t worth $2, much less $5.95, and they sure as heck aren’t EverReady Energizers. Which are made by Audiovox these days actually, but at least they still say Energizer on the package.

So I wrote a nice email to the company, which goes by a 3 letter acronym. There must be some mistake, I wrote. Surely you guys aren’t doing the old bait and switch? Can I have the proper batteries that I ordered please?

Within an hour they responded. “If you are unhappy with your purchase for any reason, send it back for a full refund.” Well. Fine. That’s what I’ll do. And then I ordered the real ones from Amazon. I would have had to pay for shipping, but I ordered the whole Game of Thrones anthology which put me into the free shipping range. WTH, I needed some summer reading anyway. I don’t know a thing about the story, but the books have got great reviews and are popular enough for HBO to make a mini-series out of them starring tough guy Sean Bean. So 4 thick books ought to keep me happy for at least a couple weeks.

Some internet deals really are too good to be true. I looked around at half a dozen other discount battery pages, and they’re all nearly the same. If you want the brand name product, you’ll pay for it.

Personally, unless the 3AA battery pack format is dead tech, I don’t know why they aren’t up there power-wise with the latest rechargeable AA batteries. 1000mAh seems pretty limp compared to the 2500mAh singles I can find. I did find a 1500mAh 3AA, the Energizer ER-P730, but I’d have to swap the sockets and that’s a pain.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/18/2011 at 02:52 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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