A warranty not worth the paper it’s printed on!

Buybattery.com is about batteries. Duracell Procell batteries. The kind you use in flashlights, wireless mics and electronics. We don’t sell automotive batteries, but maybe we should.

Here’s what happened to me yesterday.

I have to keep lots of vehicles on the road. Seven at the moment. They all need batteries. In fact our trucks all use dual batteries.

I bought a battery for an older car that I don’t drive very often, so I decided to get a really good one so I could start this cart up every month or so, even if I wasn’t driving it regularly. I went with Interstate, supposedly one of the best batteries you can buy. I got a 75 month model, one of the best you can buy.

Well, after 34 months that battery failed. It wouldn’t hold a charge. In fact, it wouldn’t even take a charge. Since I thought I had gotten the best warranty available, I assumed that I could just take it back to the dealer and get a replacement-with some sort of pro rating, of course.

Boy, was I wrong. Since I had bought the battery through our company account, the manufacturer, Interstate, claimed my car was a “commercial vehicle”, so the warranty was immediately cut in half. Interstate would not offer any warranty support. The dealer, a company that I had done business with for years, simply washed their hands of the whole matter, so I was out of luck.

Interstate, a privately held company with $650 in annual sales could have solved this problem for just a few dollars and made a customer for life. Instead, they claimed more warranty exceptions than any warranty I have ever seen.

The results:

~I will never buy another Interstate battery. That’s a fleet of seven vehicles, and growing, that will never use another of their products;

~I will never buy another battery from this local dealer, a company that has had my business for over 20 years;

~I will take every opportunity I get to make sure and tell this story to anyone who will listen.

Interested in how a honest warranty that really cares about the customer should work? Here’s ours.

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