More Sony Batteries Recalled

Scott Hagerman passes along news of yet another recall of Sony laptop batteries. The batteries in question, manufactured in the same timeframe as those involved in the massive 2006 recall, are in laptops sold by HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Acer. Neither Apple nor Sony itself used these batteries in their laptops. This time 100,000 batteries are involved — 65,000 of them sold outside of the US — vs. the 10 million recalled in 2006. The Consumer Product Safety Commission fielded 19 reports of batteries overheating and/or catching fire.

Comments

Makes sense, but begging for a conspiracy theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes sense not to use something you KNOW is bad, but it's begging for conspiracy theories. They deliberately gave us flaming batteries so their laptops would look better! Maybe there will be a lawsuit or two, but I have to wonder why someone would look to buy parts from a competitor with a clear conflict of interest.

Re:Outsourcing can be expensive

[dkf]

Seriously, after Mattel, VW and Sony, how many examples do managers need to figure out that low-cost labor can be very costly?

It's not necessarily low-cost labor as it is low-cost materials used in those batteries.

That doesn't change the fact that it is the cheap-ass managements (on both sides) that are to blame. If you go to the cheapest supplier, you'd best be prepared for the quality to be terrible. Whether that is because of dodgy materials or incompetent staff (or both) doesn't really matter.