I have had my Sony VAIO TR5GP notebook for over three years now. With a freshly purchased BP3T extended battery, I was able to milk 12+ hours of usage at one go, more than enough to last me on a regional flight. Now, I am barely able to get more than three hours. Furthermore, with the battery already suffering from chemical wear, the battery indicator has a tendency to dip to nothing once it reaches about 40% or so.

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All laptop warriors will have, at one point or another, faced the same battery wear problem as I did, and will have two options: one, buy a new battery off the shelf or, two, get the old battery recelled.However, it is pointless to buy a new battery off the shelf for an old laptop model. If your laptop is three years old, so are the batteries still sitting on the shelves. The chemical wear that all batteries suffer from begins the moment they leave the factory, so, in essence, by buying a three-year-old battery, you will be getting affected performance out of it.The other option will be to replace the cells in the battery. Online vendors such as BatteryRefill.com take your battery, crack it open and replace the cells inside with fresh ones.

In late February this year, I placed an order with BatteryRefill.com and shipped my old battery off. The cost of recelling and shipping came up to approximately US$110; considering I’d have to fork out S$650 or so for a new battery from Sony—one that is already suffering from wear—it is a steal. Unfortunately, my experience with BatteryRefill.com, marred by a lack of clear and prompt communication on their part, will turn out to be less than pleasant.

On their product page, BatteryRefill.com claims a 12-day turnaround time upon receiving your battery. Having placed the order on February 23rd and shipping out my battery on February 26nd, I expected my recelled battery to be in my hands by no later than March 21st; this is after factoring in the four days needed for my package to reach them and a generous estimate of how long it would take for them to ship it back.

On February 23, 2007, I placed the order.On February 26, 2007, I shipped out the battery. On the same day, I emailed technical support to request a change to my preferred shipping address, and to inquire about how my recelled battery will be shipped back to an international address, since there is no explaination of such a procedure on their website, other than a vague “We charge a $10 flat fee for international shipping and handling. You will receive additional information via email regarding shipping information” on the website. To date, I have not received a reply to this email.

On March 9, 2007, I received a form email from BatteryRefill.com indicating that a package with my order number has been received at their facility. However, I received an email notification from Speedpost stating that final delivery was made on March 1, 2007.

On March 22, 2007, I wrote technical a support asking the status of my order. I also reiterated the question in the email I sent on February 26.

On March 23, 2007, a support technician replied to the March 22 email of mine, asking what my order number is. It is preposterous that they are unable to trace on my order number after a month’s worth of correspondence.

On the same day, I replied the support technician with my order number and the model number of the battery I had sent in.

Five days went by. Nothing. I shot another email detailing the dates of the past actions I had taken.

On March 28, 2007—you guessed it; a week later—the support technician replied, saying his “technician will be working on this on Monday, and it will be shipped out Express Mail afterwards” and that he “apoligize (sic) for the extreme delays in your order.” No explaination was given for the delay.

And so I waited. And waited.

On April 16, 2007, 16 days later, I shot another irate email to BatteryRefill.com, asking whether my item has been shipped.

The next day, I received a reply from the support techician. In it, he said that he “just went back and had my technician expedite this so it will ship out Global Express tomorrow. I apoligize for the extreme delays.” Again, no further explaination was given for the two-week lapse.

On April 19th, I received a form email stating that my order has been shipped.

Today, four days later, my recelled battery finally arrived. I chuckled bitterly when I saw that the envelope was marked ‘Extremely Urgent’. Hell, it’d better be. Even though the battery was shipped in bubble wrap, one of the two small protusions at each end of the battery was dented. Not a big deal, but there it was.

Considering how they had to crack open the battery to replace the cells inside, the two pieces which made up the battery body were resealed rather well, save for some slight nicks. Again, not a big deal. A printout enclosed with the package recommends that the user does deep discharging five times in order for the recelled battery to reach full performance. The original 2200mAh Sony Li-Ion cells have been replaced with 2200mAh LG Chemistry cells. I am still waiting out the first discharge, so I cannot yet gauge how effective the new cells are.

Prior to placing an order with Batteryrefill.com, I had read reviews by past customers to gauge the experiences they have had with this vendor. These reviews were divided, with some claiming 100% satisfaction while most of the customer feedback were negative largely due to delayed processing and shipping. Also, a recurring complaint is that customer service and support is shoddy and slow. Now that I have experienced it, those comments do seem valid. The fact that BatteryRefill.com exhibits such a lack of clarity, efficiency and speed in responding to their customers speaks poorly of the so-called commitment proclaimed by them. I suspect they are a small outfit, which probably explains why they appear to be rather unorganized.

While I am pretty sure I would be delighted with the new life breathed into this old battery, I cannot fully recommend this vendor to others. Being a power user for whom my laptop is my mobile office, I cannot afford the down time; for two months, I was stuck with a standard battery which barely makes past the one and a half hour mark. The idea behind recelling old batteries is a good one, but the fact that you just might face the same bad experience as I had makes the notion unattractive, unless you have a healthy spare battery and are okay with a potentially long wait.

PS: BatteyRefill.com included two US$5 discount coupons in the package they sent me. If you are intending to place an order with them, give me a buzz and I will give you the discount codes on these coupons.

Update 3.04.07I’ve been told the discount code has expired.  

Update 25.04.07

It would seem the presence of new battery cells does, indeed, throw the on-board circuitry within the battery pack out of whack. I have been monitoring battery status with Notebook Hardware Control and the on-board circuitry still reports the old, pre-recelling values; the values of the battery after two deep-cycles is as follows (as I type, the battery is down to 58% on its second discharge):

Wear Level: 16%
Voltage: 11567 mV
Capacity: 3573 mWh (310.69mAh); this refers to the current capacity of the battery in use.
Full Capacity: 60970 mWh (5301 mAh); this refers to the designed capacity of the battery.

Sony claims a theoretical 6600mAh designed capacity for the BP3T. Interestingly, after the initial deep-cycle on Day One, current capacity was reported at 72000mWh after 100% charge; evidently, the recelled battery has yet to achieve its full capacity.

Update 27.04.07

It’s been four deep-cycles and the average battery life is still reported as 4 hours 15 mins which is the same as the pre-recelling run time.

Wear Level: 17%
Voltage: 11061 mV
Capacity: 6230 mWh
Full Capacity: 60730 mWh

I hope that my battery is not one of those that needs “up to 10 deep-cycles to reach its full performance” as cited by Batteryrefill.com. And why has wear level gone up by one percent? Deep-cycle charging while having to use the laptop the entire day is a such pain…

Update 08.05.07

Maximum battery life has, after approximately 8 deep cycles (and counting), improved by leaps and bounds. Now, when I log into Windows after a fresh charge, battery life is reported to be six hours and 10 minutes. Interestingly, this was only so after I had shut down Windows and left it to charge from 0% to 100%. I am inclined to believe that it is best to charge from 0% outside of Windows; i.e., at either the Windows XP startup options page in DOS or while the laptop is off. Previously, I had done all deep cycles within Windows XP and the battery life reported was certainly inaccurate. Perhaps, by charging within Windows, the battery is charged up to the 100% that the SMBus thinks is right and not the actual peak capacity of the new cells; considering this 100% is really the pre-recelled value, it is most likely inaccurate and is causing the battery to be only partially recharged.