Buyer Beware: Battery Prices On The Rise

Those of you who follow technology news or LG stock prices might have noticed the news about a massive fire at the LG Chem factory in South Korea on March 3rd. Why should you care? LG is the second largest manufacturer of laptop batteries in the world and supplies laptop batteries for many of a world's largest manufacturers of notebooks.

This means that most laptop makers won't have a sufficient supply of batteries for some time. Officials from LG Chem indicated that their battery assembly lines won't resume production for another two or three months.

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HP, Dell and Asus are among those OEMs hit hardest by the drop in production. Asus claims the battery shortage could impact up to 40 percent of their new laptop shipments ... including the much anticipated Eee PC update. Dell has reorganized the deployment of their existing stock of laptop batteries in order to make sure new built-to-order laptops have enough batteries. This means that secondary and replacement batteries from Dell are in limited supply.

As of this morning, most laptop manufacturers such as Lenovo and HP have kept laptop battery prices the same despite the decreased supply. Unfortunately, many people in our discussion forums have noticed that Dell has now increased the price of all their laptop batteries by 50 to 100 percent.

Dell is now charging $200 for a standard 6-cell laptop battery and $300 for a 9-cell extended life battery. This is a $100 increase over Dell's prices for the same batteries just a week ago.

Granted, we expected to see limited availability of laptop batteries in the wake of the LG factory fire, but we never expected to see prices like these after less than one month following the fire.

What makes the price increase all the more frustrating is that Samsung SDI and Sony in Japan are more than capable of picking up the slack by increasing battery production to supply laptop OEMs with sufficient inventory.

Regardless of whether these price increases are justified or simple price gouging, the bottom line for consumers is "Buyer Beware." If you purchase an extra laptop battery or a replacement for your old battery right now you might have to pay twice the price you should.

 

Ouch, sucks if you were sitting on the fence about buying a spare battery last week, obviously Dell is almost forcing buyers not to make a spare battery purchase unless they really, really want it. I can think of many things other than a 9-cell battery I'd rather have for $300.

 

Wow, and i thought before batteries were way overpriced....but then again i dont know exactly how much it costs to make one....

 

Most notebook batteries use Lithium 18650 cells. These cost anywhere from $4 (generic) to $10-15 (LG/Sony/Panasonic etc). Then there is some sort of regulating circuit board for charging and for regulating the output voltage. As batteries wear down there voltage drops. Most lithium cells will be permanently damaged if the voltage drops below 2v.

Sure there was a big fire and all, but Dell, HP, asus, acer, leno etc, should turn to generic companies and insist on better quality control. That would be one solution to the problem. There are plenty of capable smaller companies that make batteries out there...

 

So this will raise laptop prices for those coming into the game soon?

Like fall 08 freshmen goin to college.

 

It's a little too early to tell ... but I doubt it. The laptop OEMs know that back-to-school shoppers care about price more than anything else, so the OEMs can't afford to price themselves out of the market when the late summer and early fall arrives.

We're probably just looking at a short-term battery price hike. However, I'm sure companies like Dell will try to keep these overly high battery prices around for as long as possible.

 

Wow.... an extra $100 for a battery?! Good thing I ordered a new battery for my laptop when I did, which was only yesterday!

 

There is only one word to describe how I feel about this, its a four letter word and it starts with an 'f'.

mod edit: "feet"

 

I'm just glad I'm getting a new one from HP for free (the old one was faulty, but I'm going to keep them both )

 

Thnx mod, you know exactly how I 'feel'.

 

lol

 

Sounds like it is time for a new type of battery.
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Even "revolutionary new battery technology, completely new" are susceptible to factory fires.

 

I have an XPS desktop at home, my work-issued notebook is a Latitude D830, and I've purchased eight OptiPlex systems for my company in the last six months. I've stuck with Dell for over six years, but this hits a nerve with me.

I just configured an Inspiron 1525 on the Dell website. It comes standard with a 4-cell battery (ridiculously small for a 15.4", but keeps weight down I suppose). Upgrading to a 6-cell is now a $129 option!!! Upgrading to a 9-cell is $229 freakin' dollars!!!

It says a lot about the company's ethics and attitude toward their customers. Maybe they can sell some $500 sheets of plywood next time a hurricane blows thru the Gulf Coast. Or maybe $40/gallon drinking water here in the South during the worst drought in a century....commerce is one thing, opportunistic price gouging is quite another.

 

Price Gouging? You try selling a laptop without a battery.

Dell has to guarantee that they have enough batteries for every single laptop they're going to sell during this time period. It's not like if they run out, oops, no one can have a battery, it's if they run out, they can't sell the laptop period.

And last time I checked, a laptop battery is quite different from water. I can survive for years without one of the two.

 

Yeah.

My lady friend has been looking at the 1525.

But the 4-cell battery standard is beyond ridiculous.

Like seriously.

College require more than a 4-cell.

 

Just love how when a big company screws up the consumer has to pay the price, how pathetic.

 

Your statement, at least as I read it, reinforces my price gouging statement. Of course they can't sell a laptop without a battery. The standard 4-cell is inadequate and, in the past, has been at most a $50 upgrade and often as low as $25 for the 6-cell. How exactly does charging $79 more for the upgrade ensure that Dell will have a sufficient supply of batteries in the next few months until production resumes at normal levels?

More importantly, why is Dell the only major computer supplier that needs to increase their battery prices by 150% or more.

As of this posting, here are the prices of a few other major players-

Lenovo ThinkPad- 14.1"- standard 4-cell, 6-cell is $15 upgrade and 9-cell is $52.50 upgrade....on the 15.4" a 6-cell is standard and the 9-cell upgrade will cost you $60. What exactly is in that Dell 9-cell to make it worth $169 more? =)

HP Pavilion dv6700t- 6-cell standard, High Capacity 6-cell $29 upgrade, 12-cell is $49 upgrade.

I think it's rather shady of Dell, but in a free enterprise economy you can charge whatever the market will bear. I can safely say that Dell battery upgrades will plummet at these prices and there will be thousands of Inspiron notebooks sold with 4-cell batteries that give out long before similar Lenovo, HP or Toshiba notebooks.

 

The high price will discourage buyers from buying, and with less buyers buying batteries, there won't be a supply shortage.

 

I'm sure Dell won't be the only one raising their prices. HP and Lenovo will probably follow suit as well.

And Scythie's right about Dell's rising battery prices. It's actually based on pretty simple Supply and Demand; Supply falls, so price rises while quantity falls.

Scooberdoober, if Dell didn't raise the price, they'll probably run out of batteries for their laptops and won't be able to sell them for a while, or at least how they are unable to deliver the laptops that consumers have purchased. Either way, you won't be happy, and Dell won't be happy because, either way, they lose sales.