Can someone get to the bottom of the serial number thing? Apple is saying one set and all the websites reporting the recall are saying something totally different. Where did MacNN get their info from because it wasn't from Apple it would seem.

What makes headlines on CNN:

"APPLE RECALLS 1.8 MILLION LAPTOP BATTERIES"

What ends up in small print on that same page/column:

"Dell recalls 4.1 million batteries"

Seems to me that Dell recalling over twice that many should make an equally valid story, but I guess Apple is just the darling of the editor, today..

Dell's recall was NEWS last week.

...battery model falls in there. but i can't make sense of the serial number ranges at all. they don't seem to align with any number i see on my battery. there is a bar-coded number that starts with a W, but no matching pattern.

do they mean a battery model of A1078, and a powerbook serial number matching the ranges? if so, poorly written. even then, it doesn't match up.

i tried apple's support page, but it's slammed.

Is this recall the reason why the Apple Repair website is not responding? Is it off line or crashed? (for the last hour and a half) I need to check the status of my MacBook repair...discoloration issue...it's says "repair in progress" for the last 2 days...oh boy...

1. Contrary to news reports, this is actually just a SMALL expansion of a battery recall program that started LAST YEAR. I have in my hands a document from Apple dated May 25, 2005 that lists almost all of the "newly" recalled batteries. They've added a few number ranges to it but it's basically the same as last year.

2. The "model number" and "serial number" referred to in the reports is the BATTERY'S INFO ONLY. Has nothing to do with the Mac's serial number. This info is CLEARLY PRINTED on the battery itself.

3. We've gotten a ton of panic calls ... please people, if there were high risk of explosion or burn they would be handling this recall ENTIRELY differently. It's not that big a deal -- check your serial and model number against the list FROM APPLE (ignore other reports), call if you qualify, and enjoy your new battery.

There have been a tiny number of reported incidents out of 1.1 million of these batteries in the US. The chance that your own battery will Dell on you before you replace it is pretty darn slim.

Personally I was disappointed mine wasn't on the list, then I could send back my old dead one for a new one I could sell on eBay.

I would hate to be the head of Sony's battery manufacturing QA dept right about now. Although I suspect he was fired well before it got this far.

Looks like the Apple website is swamped with this issuee - it wouldn't take my serial number on the web, and their phone system is overloaded and can't be accessed.

my battery for my 2 MacBook Pros recalled and they arrived in less than 1 day. Put the old battery back in the box, peel the label, and call DHL for pickup.

This is as easy as it gets.

...in my case. was just hard to tell if mine was included in the recall. finally figured it out after apple's site eventually loaded. MacNNs/CNNs etc's limited info was a bit foggy.

so, i put in my serial number (which the apple support site is located in the wrong position for a 12" pbook) and my battery serial number (which is within the recalled range on the site) and it says that my battery is ineligable. anyone else encountering this? is apple just not ready to deal with this? the site is slow as heck... presumably from the traffic.

Ok lets clear this. When Dell recalls battery made by Sony everyone shouts "Dell is s***" but when Apple recalls battery everyone says "Sony is s*** and has nothing to do with Apple!" WHAT THA??

Lets just say Dell and Apple are both shitat making hardware with Apple only having the advantage of a slick OS and its iApps. Ok?!

I have the same issue as ph0ust... I entered my info on the site and my pb sn shows, "This computer is eligible for the Battery Exchange Program." but my battery sn shows, "This serial number is invalid or does not qualify for the program."

I called Apple support and spoke to a level 1... she said to try again in a few hours since the site is slammed - she said they use the same validation website to enter exchange info.

We'll see what happens.

By battery sn is: 3K530...

The big difference is that this is voluntary.

And last I checked I can still fly Qantas with my PowerBook but not with my Dell.

...wut's that all about? just curious.

check discussions:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=613327&tstart=0

The big difference is that this is voluntary.

Yeah, its voluntary in the sense of "Recall the batteries yourself or we'll force you to do so".

If you get "bad serial numbers" on your batteries that are in the affected list, tray again later. I have 2 batteries, one in the loist and one not. I typed in my PB serial and the sn from both batteries and both battery serial numbers came up as bad. I then tried just the affected Battery. Same thing. I tried later (using the same SN using Firefox autofill) and it was accepted...

testudo's mom called. she's lonely.

that's how any recall works. company's own up in advance or they wait to be forced. apple owned up in advance. and ultimately it's sony's prob anyway. mind telling us how more proactive they should have been? steve jobs should fly to my house in his gulfstream, cook me dinner, pleasure my dog and exchange my battery?

a company like apple doesn't continue to maintain the #1 ranking for customer service in almost every credible survey, including all the PC magazines, by treating their customers like s***.

troll elsewhere.

I strongly second that!

Dell and Sony knew about it for a year and probably wouldn't have acted if it were not for the Exploding Dell stories that have been a regular occurance over the past weeks. I wonder what would have happened if these reports didn't get published? Knowing Dell they would have not owned up to anything.

Apple on the other hand had 1 public report of a PB fire from the past weeks. In being proactive they issued a recall.

And, yes the battery in my PB is affected by this latest batch. Just ordered it today, so the site is accepting the new batch of S/N's.

With Dell getting this story out there with their 4 million battery recall (and it really is a Sony problem and a Sony recall rather than a Dell recall but Dell and Apple happen to have their names on the product), it made it much easier for Apple to say "oh yeah, we got some of those c*** Sony batteries too." Or to put it the other way, it would have been much harder for Apple to assert "our Sony batteries which have had a few heat problems aren't as bad as Dell's Sony's batteries so we're not doing anything." They wouldn't have faired well in the obligatory class action law suit that always follows these sorts of things.

This worked out pretty well for Apple all things considered. If you're going to recall millions of anything, much better to let some other company take the heat first. All the late night jokes, SNL routines are old news now, so Apple gets a relatively free ride. The story this time should be "more Sony batteries get recalled."

Hey, Apple's stock ticked up a bit yesterday after the recall so clearly investors aren't worried about this.

So, putting in a rootkit to make your computer vulnerable wasn't enough for Sony, they had to put a small bomb your computer too :)

I also was unable to get my battery's serial number to validate yesterday, but it's working today. (3K437...)

Though this is a really long time to wait it would be even worse if you had a dell. They are estimating 75 days (10+ weeks)! In any case this is a very big & expensive thing for them to have to perform. Not sure if anyone remembers but they did catch a few of them already, I believe last May or so, & initiated a recall on their own. I wonder if the prior recall accounts for the discrepincies in the range apple reports from the ranges reported by the safety commission. Who knows.

-Hez

Also, if you have more than one kind of system, the validator checks the battery to the system. I couldn't do my PowerBook and iBook batteries under my PowerBook. Seems a shame, now they may be shipping them seperately rather than together.

i just bought a laptop battery from laptopsforless because my iBook battery wasn't holding a charge (unfortunetly it wasn't on of the recalled models). my question is, how do these replacement batteries stand up to the manufacturers?

Is the battery recall still ongoing? My iBook battery just got so hot that I took it outside and set it on my grill, just in case. It is dead. And, of course, I need it for work.

I have an iBook that has heated up enough to scare the bejeezus out of me. However, none of the numbers on the battery even come close to those listed. The battery is a Model #8416 and has 2 numbers on it. LW334ORDP7W and UV33612BPBN. why are they so different from those on recall list? Which one is the right one? Does anyone know? Any help is appreciated. Thank you.