Toshiba Rant

[Andy Pogue]

2-1/2 year old Sattilite laptop battery went bad. Two batteries ordered from Toshiba direct did not work. MANY hours on phone shuffled between departments. Last night I was told they had sent the wrong batteries since they could not find the correct one for my model. Last year replacing Wife's battery was a snap.
I asked several of the dozen support personnel I spoke to to connect me to their supervisor, and each time was told that they were the supervisor. (What are the odds?)
anyway Batteries Plus Bulbs store cannot find my model in charts for new battery.

thanks for letting me blow off steam, and consider other brands before Toshiba, I certainly will!

BTW- I have bought many Toshiba computers before for work, home and church. Battery life was often a problem, but easily remedied with aftermarket one.

[Randy Red Bemont]

I too have had several Toshiba Satellite computers and this will be my last one when it dies. They have all eaten batteries and hard drives. Next time I will try something different.

Red

[Jim Koepke]

MANY hours on phone shuffled between departments. Last night I was told they had sent the wrong batteries since they could not find the correct one for my model.

They are the service people for Toshiba and they couldn't find the correct battery... So they made the decision of sending the wrong batteries?

This kind of logic would get me upset enough that all I could do for the next two days is climb up their corporate ladder until I found someone who would fire the "stupervisor(s)" who felt this was a good thing to do.

jtk

[Jerome Stanek]

I have had many Toshiba laptops and never had a problem with their batteries My wife's is almost 10 years old and still gets about 20 minutes

[Matt Meiser]

We use atbatt.com for battery replacements where I work and they seem to be good quality. The one for this laptop has lasted longer than the original Dell battery in fact.

Battery and hard drive failures are the two most common failures in my experience. I don't think you'll have a better experience by switching brands. Batteries typically have a lifetime of a few years and I bet I've had over a 25% failure rate on PC drives over the last several years after about 3 years. It might be close to 10% in the first year. USB drives are higher than that. You pretty much need to plan to replace them every other year in my experience.

[Andy Pogue]

Thanks for the heads up on atbat.com. Website was great battery was in stock higher amp hours at one half the cost of Toshibas even with overnight shipping A pleasure to deal with !

[Phil Thien]

Well if the battery fit and doesn't charge/work, you might have a bigger problem than a bad battery. Typically, manufacturers make sure batteries that aren't compatible, just physically won't fit.

Failed charging circuits are a common failure I see. Hope that isn't the case for you.

Let us know how the atbatt unit works.

[Curt Harms]

I have no reservations about buying 3rd party laptop batteries from Amazon. I don't buy the most expensive and certainly not the cheapest. I look for quite a few reviews - 50+ and so far so good. I'm pretty sure HP, Dell, Lenovo and the rest don't make their own batteries.

[Andy Pogue]

Problem solved. Ordered battery from at atbat.com at 3:00. PM Thursday. Battery delivered at 10:00AM Friday. Plugged it in- computer is working great.

I got a higher amp hour battery for about half the price delivered in less than 24 hours. To say that I am well pleased is an understatement!!
This is how American businesses should operate! Have you guys thought about running for office?

Well done atbat.com, I am your biggest fan !!

[Andy Pogue]

Matt, thanks for the heads up on atbat!

[Mark Blatter]

thanks for letting me blow off steam, and consider other brands before Toshiba, I certainly will!

BTW- I have bought many Toshiba computers before for work, home and church. Battery life was often a problem, but easily remedied with aftermarket one.

For many, many years I have tried not to buy Toshiba products. They are the ones that sold US technology on the production of screws for Navy ships to the Soviet Union when they of course were not supposed to. I relented one time for a laptop and it was the worst computer I ever bought.

[Brian Elfert]

Toshiba used to be the laptop everybody used back in the mid 90s. These days I don't remember the last time I saw a business person with a Toshiba laptop. Business people all have Dell, HP, or Lenovo with some Macbooks too.

[Matt Meiser]

Yeah, my first work laptop in 1996 was a Toshiba. Since then they've all been Dells except 2 Thinkpads back when IBM still made them. Right now I have a Dell from my company and a Lenovo Thinkpad that belongs to a client. I wouldn't be surprised if my next company machine is other than a Dell, and Dell just lost their long-time exclusive supplier status with my household unless Michael Dell himself calls me to apologize and compensate me for the service fiasco that was my personal Dell laptop. An HP replaced that and so far I'm pretty happy with it. I came VERY close to buying a Macbook--decision wasn't final until I was checking out.

[Myk Rian]

It's very rare that I buy OEM when replacing things. The cost is almost always double of other sources.

[Phil Thien]

Toshiba still makes business notebooks. You don't find Tecra or Portege machines at places like Best Buy.

We've actually found Toshiba machines outlast many other brands. In fact I'm always surprised when I'm sending stacks of notebooks out for recycling, just how few newer Toshiba machines are in there. Always lots of Dell, HP, Acer, etc. Always very few Toshiba machines.