Likely counterfeit battery with genuine-looking Lenovo label

[olegace]

Hi all,

I'm new here, so forgive me if this is a common newbie mistake. I own a X61, which is great, but the battery got old and held very little charge.

I purchased a battery off eBay that was marketed as a "Genuine Lenovo" battery. (this was the larger 8 or 9-cell battery). The battery I received indeed looked genuine, with the black and yellow Lenovo sticker, etc. It worked fine for ~2 weeks, and gave good battery life, I'd guess about 5 hours. It took one or two recharge cycles for the laptop to report the correct capacity, but once it "caught up", it was fine.

Then the battery stopped working entirely - would not charge or power the laptop. I measured the voltage on the connector at essentially 0 V, so it's really dead. At this point I noticed that there are a few subtle signs of a counterfeit battery - some of the printing on the label is a tiny bit off, it has a few additional paper stickers, the mold is ever so slightly off, etc. It is exceptionally well copied (assuming that's what it is) - there's no doubt that most people would not notice the difference, which the seller's high feedback bear out. I did find another case described online, with an Asus battery from the same seller, that the buyer suspected as a fake.

I contacted the seller, who unsurprisingly asked me to ship it back to China. I can easily get a refund using eBay SafeHarbor, but I was wondering if

- there's anything I can do to absolutely confirm it's counterfeit
- Lenovo would be interested in getting a hold of the fake battery

Any other advice welcome as well.

Cheers,
-Oleg

[Harryc]

My advice would be to log onto the Lenovo Forums and sent a PM to 'Mark_Lenovo' there and ask if Lenovo is interested in investigating the battery.
http://forums.lenovo.com/

[olegace]

Thanks, I've been trying to post this there also, but their account verification emails don't seem to be going through. I'll keep trying.

[ThinkRob]

I was wondering if [...] there's anything I can do to absolutely confirm it's counterfeit

If you're running Linux, load the tp_smapi module and take a look at some of the pseudo-files in /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0, specifically 'model' and 'manufacture_date'. In my experience, knock-off batteries either won't bother with these, or will get them wrong. It's not a reliable indicator (as I've seen third party batteries that have reasonable info in all the smapi-accessible fields), but it might provide a quick confirmation that it's not genuine.

[dr_st]

If you're running Linux, load the tp_smapi module and take a look at some of the pseudo-files in /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0, specifically 'model' and 'manufacture_date'. In my experience, knock-off batteries either won't bother with these, or will get them wrong. It's not a reliable indicator (as I've seen third party batteries that have reasonable info in all the smapi-accessible fields), but it might provide a quick confirmation that it's not genuine.

The Thinkvantage Power Manager software for Windows displays the same information (I assume Power Manager and tp_smapi read from the same places in the battery controller).

[ThinkRob]

The Thinkvantage Power Manager software for Windows displays the same information (I assume Power Manager and tp_smapi read from the same places in the battery controller).

Ah, excellent! I didn't know that. I knew it gave access to some of the same stuff (like the charge thresholds), but I didn't know about the rest. And yes, I believe they both access the same hardware.

[olegace]

Thanks guys. I believe I now have what I need - while all the fields are filled with plausible-looking values (manufacturer is Sanyo, the FRU# is correct, etc), the barcode number doesn't match what's on the battery, likely because they hardcode the same number into all batteries.

I think that's sufficient confirmation for me that the battery is counterfeit.

[ThinkRob]

Thanks guys. I believe I now have what I need - while all the fields are filled with plausible-looking values (manufacturer is Sanyo, the FRU# is correct, etc), the barcode number doesn't match what's on the battery, likely because they hardcode the same number into all batteries.

I think that's sufficient confirmation for me that the battery is counterfeit.

Well done!

I suspect that if you let Lenovo know they'll go after the seller pretty hard; they stand to have their name tarnished if such a battery develops a major problem.

[olegace]

I PMed Mark_Lenovo on the Lenovo forums as Harryc recommended, gave him a quick summary and pointed him at this thread too. (in addition to opening a counterfeit item case with eBay, and leaving a very explicit negative feedback for the seller).

Needless to say, do not buy anything from happybuy0309, despite his high feedback (http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d ... ckAsSeller), all the feedback means is that his fakes are very hard to distinguish from the real items.

Note that there's another fake battery issue from the same seller: http://slickdeals.net/forums/archive/in ... 52385.html

[dr_st]

I agree, trusting that you took into account the fact that the barcode number in the Power Manager should actually be a substring of what is printed on the battery.

[olegace]

Yes, I did take that into account. I noticed that the string that comes up in the power manager is roughly the 2nd half of what's printed on the battery, starting with 1Z in this case. On the fake battery it doesn't match at all.

[ThinkRob]

You should also open a dispute on your item and/or report his auction(s) given your level of proof. eBay hates counterfeit items too, and if a seller is caught selling fakes he will often get his entire account nuked, plus maybe even get his PayPal account locked.

[olegace]

Sorry if I wasn't clear above, I did open an eBay case against the seller as well.

[bri]

I need a new battery now too and was about to start a new thread. I tried a "generic" battery years ago and got rid of it because Thinkpad Power Manager kept popping up an alert that it was not a "genuine" battery and it was annoying. Are there any "generic" batteries that don't do this i.e. have they found a way around it? It seems like OP's battery didn't trip the alert.

I was looking at this one:
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-LAPTOP-NOTEBOOK ... 2659wt_904

I would look at sellers only in the US, would make warranty returns easier too