battery problem on my sisters powerbook G4

[BriGy86]

she bought a power book from my work this past saturday

their return policy- they will refund all of your money (no restocking fee)

but they give you a gift card (because they wanted to cut down on people "renting" laptops and pordable DVD players) you have 21 days from purchase to return it

anyway she got the computer home and started to charge it, the light went immidiately to green (which should mean its charged) but the battery showed 3% charge after 12 hours of being connected to the wall over night (if the battery is in the process of charging the light should be amber)

we bought a service plan through my work but i think its stupid to use it if its either A something that apple should be able to fix directly (i.e. sending us a good battery and we send the bad one back) or B ust returning the unit because its with in the 21 days

(we are allowed 2 battery replacements in 3 years of the plan)

problem is all of the computers in stock at my work may have a bad battery too (there are a bunch of forum discussions at apple.com about the problem sounds like a bad batch of battery's) so just echanging it may not be an option

my sis called apple (since she is with in the first 90 days of phone support) they had her do a bunch of things like holding down certain buttons when powering on and holding certain buttons with the computer off and nothing helped they insist that its not the battery and wont send her a replacement one

she told them "well i think its a bit funny that you have a forum with many people complaining about this same problem with my same symptoms, yet those people were able to have replacement battery's sent to them" the tech on the other line said she should take those with a grain of salt... WTF?

any help would be great

thanks in advanced

 

[Vegito]

call back and bitch.. if not return that pos

 

[BriGy86]

Originally posted by: Vegito
call back and bitch.. if not return that pos

i was thinking that too, if all else fails we'll return the unit and wait for another (good) one to come in

i told her to try and call back and see if she can get a different tech guy

 

[kd7fhd]

if taking it with a grain of salt is their total solution, return it. That is one sorry company that won't take care of their customers.

 

[BriGy86]

Originally posted by: kd7fhd
if taking it with a grain of salt is their total solution, return it. That is one sorry company that won't take care of their customers.

well this is apple's tech support that said that not my company

but yes i agree, for some reason they offered to have her send her computer to them, but they will not send a little battery to us, and we would be perfectly fine if they wanted our CC number incase we decided to keep it ya know

 

[DeadMilkman]

First off, yes I would AGREE with Apple to take its forums with a grain of salt...

If you've never read them they are bitch fests where a few people make a really loud cry over problems.

Now that doesn't mean they are always wrong...but it does mean I wouldn't use them to insinuate there is a wide spread problem.

Things you should know
#1 if you bought and extended warrentee she has longer than 90days phone support.
#2 Keep going through phone support...Guess what...the tech could be right...
It could be ANY of the following:
The power management unit not CORRECTLY charging the battery (IE going faulty)
The power management thinking its not receiving full power and not applying any spare to the battery.
The Batter
The Power Adaptor
The Power Adaptor Port

And he could also be wrong Just follow through support...as a phone tech nothing was more agrivating than dealing with a person who wouldn't listen to you because they thought they knew better...

What's probably gonna happen:

Call them back...explain your problem...have them go through steps...they will quite likely ask it to be sent in. She'll be without it probably 5-10days.

Option 2: Take it to an Apple Store...You can sit with a tech and demonstrate the problem...should be VERY easy to get a work order started on it.

Remember, don't ask for a new battery. Ask for the problem to be fixed.
Explain you've charged it over and over and no charge is holding on this NEW laptop.

Edit: Personally my hunch is its the power management unit...before the battery. (Batteries are tested more)

 

[BriGy86]

Originally posted by: DeadMilkman
<snip>

i see your point, it is my fault that i did not mention this-

she brought her laptop back to my work and we changed her battery out with a known "good" one i mention that in quotes because as far as we knew it was good (we opened up a brand new laptop that had never been sold and tried that battery) that did not help

also many people on that forum mentioned their model numbers and they all started with the same 5 characters

as for the phone support, on their apple car package it says that the customer initially gets 1 year of parts and labor warrenty and 90 days of phone support, after that 90 days its 50 dollars a call

i did forget about the apple store though, if she brought it in there it wouldn't cost her anything since it is still under warrenty right?