iPhone batteries...

[Aractus]

Okay, I'll try and make a youtube video publicly shaming this company soon.

If you're like me and you need a new battery, make sure no matter what that you check the battery cycle count as soon as you get it. You can get an app for that, but I just use a program called "iBackupBot". This is my original battery:



As you can see it's at the end of its life and can't hold a full charge.

This is the battery I got from here (they also have a website) take note of what the listing claims:

"Brand New Stock

"SkyPhonez offers only genuine and original products. Items may be unsealed due to our random inspection and for unlocking purposes, however they are 100% brand new and never used."

And this is the battery they sent me:



It didn't even look new. The manufacture date stencilled on it is 06/2012. As you can see it's also at the end of its life, and it also cannot hold a full charge.

This is the message I sent on my original PayPal payment:

Note to seller
PLEASE NOTE: Due to the large number of fraudulent iphone batteries on eBay, the first thing I will do when receiving the battery is to pull the battery info from ibackupbot. If it reads more than 5 charge cycles then the battery is not new and you will be reported to the police.

That didn't deter them from sending a fraudulent "new" battery. Once I get my refund I'll decide what further action to take, but it goes without saying I will leave the strongest possible negative feedback warning other buyers, and I will make a youtube video publicly shaming the company. And yes, I will probably report them to the NSW police as well.

Anyway, my main message in posting this is that if you buy a new battery make sure you check the cycle count before anything else. Also, a new battery shouldn't be manufactured in 2012 - I mean it could be old stock, but do take note of the manufacture date also. And frankly I could tell right away just from looking at it that it was used. A new battery does not have a bent power cable - you have to do that yourself when you install it, but an old one will be pre-bent from its original configuration in its old phone.

[dyresand]

Wow you should shame them for that that is fraud and you should request to get your money back.

[Aractus]

If you think that's bad, then this will blow your mind.

[Whateverist]

Thank you for the warning.

[Aractus]

I have reported the matter to the to eBay, to PayPal and to counterfeit.com.au (my police report failed at the last page so I probably have to do it all again). The only other eBay listing to an Australian bluishness is this one. I wouldn't trust them because 1. they've removed the manufacture date from the listing photo and 2. the battery in the photo is used - just look at the bent power cable. Want to see something even worse? Have a look at this one. $19.99 + 9.90 postage for a battery they tell you is used!

Oh and FYI, if you are replacing your battery it's very very easy but do remember that it's a piece of electronics and needs to be handled carefully and most importantly in a static-free environment. Now the scam only works if customers are too stupid to realise the battery is used - if you can't tell the difference between a used battery and a new one, if you can't at the very least read the manufacture date on the battery, then what the fuck are you doing toying with electronics in the first place??

---

Oh and some further info - the real problem is Apple. They're a C.U.N.T of a company. They don't care about extending the life of their products, it's called planned obsolescence and they want you to throw away your phone every 2 years. It's unbelievably fucking wasteful. Let me give you another example of waste here in Australia, most private health insurance gives the customer the option to get a "free" pair of glasses every 2 years. Regardless of whether they're needed or not. The government subsidises private health cover - they pay about 1/3rd of the cost. So the taxpayer are the ones paying for this wasteful shit.

They refuse to sell iPhone batteries. And if you've already done self-repairs on your phone then they will illegally refuse to accept your phone for repairs, etc. If you need a new battery they replace your phone with another one that probably doesn't have a new battery and charge you $109 or so. So where do you get new batteries then?

Well that's why it's fucking difficult. You either have scum sellers who buy used batteries from alibaba that may or may not have a gold-wrapper around them; or you have batteries that you know are new but are 3rd party and probably are not worth the risk, and then you have companies like ifixit *(as fas as I know) - (USA) and appleipodparts (UK):

http://youtu.be/qOOZZeTTR1o

That have sourced the batteries from the factories that supply them to Apple. But where the fuck can I buy one in Australia then?

[jesus_wept]

Let me get this straight. Apple doesn't sell replacement batteries, so you decided to buy a cheap, "genuine" battery from eBay, from a company that says the battery might be unsealed, knowing full well that eBay is full of fake batteries and scammers, and you're upset that you're been scammed?

[Aractus]

Well because I didn't think registered Australian businesses, with a retail outlet, would do it. I also didn't think they'd be so stupid as to disregard my warning on PayPal. Something like an iPhone battery would cost at most $8 fresh off a boat in a shipping container per unit. It may be as low as $4. Without cutting one open and pricing the parts I can't know for certain, but it's somewhere in that range. So I expect a new, genuine, battery should cost $10-20. $24 at the most (150% mark-up). Apple charges $95 to change the battery - and they wipe your phone's memory and may send you a different phone back. And it takes up to a week. Up to a week for a 60 second job. AND, they don't pay Australian company tax. So I'm not going to give them my business. I can order from appleipodparts.com (UK) at a cost of about $45. At least double what the cost should be (even if I take the shipping cost off, it's still around a 300% mark-up at the very least), but they can charge whatever they like because they know that it's difficult to find their competitors that sell genuine products, and that Apple charges much more than that. For $20 a battery (fresh off the boat) it would have been a much better quality battery with a much longer life and perhaps a 10-20% higher capacity. In fact the same is true for the iPhone 5 which has the lowest battery capacity of any iProduct because they reduced the size considerably compared with the 4/4S (the 4S battery is significantly smaller than the 4 battery but it holds almost the same charge). The iPhone 4 battery's capacity is 1420 mAh, and the iPhone 4S's capacity is 1430 mAh despite being signifiantly smaller. Had Apple used a better quality battery the capacity as mentioned could have been boosted around 10-20% and furthermore it would have lasted a lot longer than 18 months without loosing capacity. But they don't want to do that, chiefly because they don't want the batteries to last. They also deliberately made them non-user-serviceable, most other phones have easily detached batteries. With the iPhone you have to open it to access the battery, but from there it's straightforward.

[dyresand]

If you think that's bad, then this will blow your mind.

wow...

Also i did a google search for the OEM battery i seen a couple of places selling them.

[Aractus]

Yeah, and look how old those reviews are. Amazon are not doing themselves any favours by allowing such sellers to operate - they're just devaluing their brand.

[jesus_wept]

Well because I didn't think registered Australian businesses, with a retail outlet, would do it.

You live and learn.

I also didn't think they'd be so stupid as to disregard my warning on PayPal.

I wouldn't say they're stupid. If anything, presuming the law in Australia is similar to the UK, they're quite clever because they know you're not going to waste your time and money taking them to a small claims court because it'll cost you more than you'll get back.

This is how many scammers work. Having a registered business means nothing really because they'll just close the business down, if needs be, and start again under a different name. We have a programme here called watchdog (or we used to at least) and you would see it happening all the time on it. A company opens and rips everyone off, only to close and reopen under a different name to do it all over again.

You could've saved yourself a whole lot of time by saying "yes, you've got it straight" btw.