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2009 MBP battery replacement. Advice?

davehutch

davehutch

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 5, 2009
732
33
Croxley, Herts
Hi all, up until this weekend, my battery has been reasonably ok for a 6-year old machine,with Coconut Battery showing it as 75% of its design capacity.
However, on Saturday, it suddenly shut down at 40% or so, so I charged it up and then it did it again, with Coconut showing it as 35% of its design capacity.
I've discharged and charged it a few times to see what happens, but to cut a long story short (too late!), I'd feel bad selling it to someone unless I knew the battery was up to scratch.
Coconut only shows 304 charge cycles so my question is, under what circumstances have you known Apple to replace a battery on an out-of-warranty Mac, free of charge?
Does it need to meet a minimum performance at all?
I can quite easily replace the battery myself and buy the battery from iFixit, but do you think it would be worth taking it to Apple first to see if they would definitely charge me for replacing it?
 
davehutch said:
Hi all, up until this weekend, my battery has been reasonably ok for a 6-year old machine,with Coconut Battery showing it as 75% of its design capacity.
However, on Saturday, it suddenly shut down at 40% or so, so I charged it up and then it did it again, with Coconut showing it as 35% of its design capacity.
I've discharged and charged it a few times to see what happens, but to cut a long story short (too late!), I'd feel bad selling it to someone unless I knew the battery was up to scratch.
Coconut only shows 304 charge cycles so my question is, under what circumstances have you known Apple to replace a battery on an out-of-warranty Mac, free of charge?
Does it need to meet a minimum performance at all?
I can quite easily replace the battery myself and buy the battery from iFixit, but do you think it would be worth taking it to Apple first to see if they would definitely charge me for replacing it?
Click to expand...

They won't replace it out of warranty at all free of charge. Hell they won't even replace it in warranty if it is deemd to be down to hard use that they have died, the cost of replacing them is your responsibility.

This is rightly so can you imagine the increased cost of their laptops if they replaced batteries for the life of the machine????
 
Samuelsan2001 said:
They won't replace it out of warranty at all free of charge. Hell they won't even replace it in warranty if it is deemd to be down to hard use that they have died, the cost of replacing them is your responsibility.

This is rightly so can you imagine the increased cost of their laptops if they replaced batteries for the life of the machine????
Click to expand...

What constitutes "hard use"?
 
I think your battery has given you great service. I have the same machine and am presently on my third battery.
 
nebo1ss said:
I think your battery has given you great service. I have the same machine and am presently on my third battery.
Click to expand...

I agree. Although most of its life has been as a desktop machine, on the mains.
Just odd that suddenly it shut down at 40% with no warning...twice.
I'll go through the calibration routine mentioned in the link above
 
davehutch said:
I agree. Although most of its life has been as a desktop machine, on the mains.
Just odd that suddenly it shut down at 40% with no warning...twice.
I'll go through the calibration routine mentioned in the link above
Click to expand...

I would open it up and look for battery swelling, if it is the whip it out quick they can cause some structural damage to components swelling and if they burst they they can cause so much corosion as to be logic board ending....
 
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