Internal short caused overheating; HP recalls flawed battery packs |
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Sat, 15 Oct 2005 16:05
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SAN FRANSISCO: If you use an HP Pavilion or an HP Compaq laptop, check the battery pack. If it bears a bar code label starting with GC, IA, LO or L1, you’d be wise to return it for a replacement. The company has recalled 135,000 battery packs as several were reported to have overheated causing minor property damage.
These lithium ion batteries battery packs are Chinese-made or Taiwan-made and were shipped with Hewlett-Packard laptops between May 2004 and May 2005. These rechargeable battery packs were also sold separately and are used to power Compaq Presario and Compaq Evo laptops.
The California-based company received 16 complaints that said the batteries overheated causing the plastic case to melt or get charred. These battery packs were a potential fire hazard, they said. Four of these complaints originated from the US and said the overheated batteries damaged the laptop. 85,000 of the recalled batteries were sold in the US.
Upon investigating the company found that an internal short was responsible for the flawed batteries causing them to overheat. The company refused to reveal the name of its supplier who made these batteries.
The company offered to replace the battery packs free of cost. After a customer verifies that he has the flawed battery, HP would mail the new batteries in 5 to 10 days and also send a postage paid envelope in which the customer can send the defective batter pack. For details and verification, customers can log on to: www.hp.com/support/BatteryReplacement.
The company is the world’s second largest PC maker.
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