Battery replacement in small electronics causes Pcat's head to explode.

[politicat]

Film at eleven.

I'm replacing the batteries in our iPods (now 3 years old) and in my PDA (now 2 years old) and DH's PDA (3 years old) and I'm running into nothing but problems. And I haven't even cracked cases yet.

I knew I'd need to find a very specific microdriver for my PDA (I have a Sony Clie TJ35 - a solid consumer user model, but not top of the line and no longer cutting edge); it has #01 tri-wing screws on the back. You'd think Sony put plutonium or something inside, as hard as they try to keep users from cracking the case.... This is a not easy to find screwdriver, 90% because identifying it is difficult. Screw sizing resources are scarce, and none of the electronics shops in the area could ID it, either. Finally found one and ordered it... but they're backordered, and so when it hadn't arrived by Friday, I ended up having to cancel, then order through another company. It ships Monday, so it will probably be here by NEXT friday.

The batteries arrived tuesday, and this week being more full than not, I put the box - still sealed - in my office with the intent to handle it this weekend. Stupid me - always check the box as soon as it comes in the door. Today, when I finally get time to deal with the iPods, I open the box and find not the 3 iPod batteries we ordered, but one. And the invoice, which says that there should have been 3 in the box, and my credit card charge slip, which was charged for three. And of course, there's no customer service on Sunday afternoons to whom I can have a not so pleasant conversation with. Fortunately, the Clie battery and the Zaurus batteries were in the box.

So... no batteries were changed. And if Laptopsforless.com (the vendor from whom I bought these batteries) won't make it right... there's gonna be a whole lot of yelling going on - not in the least because they've gotten something like $500 worth of business from us in the last quarter.

Have I mentioned that I really don't like being the one in the house with the electronics knack?

[China_cat]

1. Have you looked to see if a set of jeweler's tools would do the job?

That's what we used to replace the battery in my Jornada.

[politicat]

4. Yes, we looked, no they won't work.

Sony considers user servicability to be a bad thing, and the screws are #001 tri-wing - TEENY, TINY little Y shaped openings. We'd tried a straight and a phillips, but they're designed to not work with anything but a #001 tri-wing microdriver.

It will be here friday.

[eleny]

2. would you still recommend them as a vendor?

or should i wait for the film? :D

[politicat]

3. After a call monday morning, they shipped the two missing ones post haste.

And they sent them the speedy way instead of the slow way.

So they made good.

[eleny]

5. Thanks

How a company deals with a problem is a telling indicator.

[politicat]

6. Update: all arrived, all reinstalled.

It looks like Sony stripped a screw - a phillips head - in the Clie when they serviced it for a backlight problem under warranty 2.5 years ago, but I managed to replace the battery without removing that screw. (Think orthoscopic surgery). Not pretty, but the battery is in, functional and seems to be lasting a lot longer (I read on the ereader for about 3 hours this morning and hit 75% battery power; before I replaced the battery, 3 hours continuous use would have killed it.)

We literally cracked one of the iPod cases but learned what not to do and the iPod is fine - a little bit of superglue mended the crack invisibly.