ebod, I hope you really did have to replace the battery. Many of the “bad” batteries being turned in these days are just deeply-discharged and work fine, when properly-recharged, which in part, addresses OregonLC's totally legitimate concern about all the conversations floating around about our products.
We sell more AGM products than anyone else out there by a wide margin, so we're bound to have more smoke around our brand. I don't have access to anyone's warranty return numbers but our own, so I can't comment on other manufacturers or brands in that regard. I can read their warranty exclusions for “
A Battery with an open circuit voltage (OCV) of equal to or less then 8.0V will be deemed as over discharged and void warranty due to misuse and/or neglect. “ and see that they deal with the same issues of discharge-only returns.
We used to send discharge-only batteries to the smelter, but now we recharge them and stick them in race cars competing in the
Chumpcar World Series. We've outfitted entire fields of vehicles with these "dead" batteries someone else returned under warranty and except for the the weight of the batteries, those racers couldn't be happier to have them. Regardless of whose batteries you choose to buy, keep your voltage levels properly-maintained and they'll probably last a lot longer.
Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries, Inc.
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries
