Milwaukee Red lithium 18v batteries DEAD!!!

[Groovejet]

Does anyone have experience with Milwaukee 18 v red lithium batteries?

The two ive got have stopped working and are pretty new.
Ive took them apart and tested the cells and they all show up 3.8v which is great, in total exceeds the 18v .

So ....at first i thought it could be battery dicharge problems, as they have circuits now to shut of batteries before damage occurs.
But the cells are charged up so ??? aint gota clue.

PCB in battery must be putting the brakes on it releasing that 3ah of power somehow.

Ive released the torx screw in pcb but the pcb doesnt seem to want to come out easily!!

Has anyone had experiance with these???

Thanx

 

[Deleted member 174758]

It was only a matter of time before we started to see dead batteries on these (I'm now waiting for Bosch......). It's been an issue on and off with Makitas for a few years. The answer is the same, though - if the battery is under 12 months old I'd expect Milwaukee to replace it, if it's older than that but under 3 years (reckoned by some to be the limit for heavy iuse of Li batteries) then I'd still expect them to honour the guarantee, if only partly

 

[Groovejet]

So... the pcb was connected by 5 or 6 soldered connections...very small pcb mostly surface mount components.

I Looked at the board from both sides... nothing, then under the board there was a ribbon cable!, something to do with measuring battery voltage.
Anyway it was really fragile and had snapped.
I dont know if i had something to do with it or not? But i never noticed snapping it myself.

Also there was a wire connected to terminal 5, which may be negative???
This was strange it seemed to be a solid core wire crimped at both ends with a centre section of braided copper wire...Which was broke also
Well...I know for certain i never done this. It looked like, even with the brake repaired the wire would be too short to connect it!!!!
So the only explanation i came to was that it must be a fail safe wire ( If there is such a thing?) And had burnt out.

This wire i thought must be the culprit, so i re-soldered everything up, which took for ever then tested it and still NOTHING!!

So frustrating as they are new and suppose to be top end tools, Milwaukee wont touch them as we never registered them on-line.
So we've got two impact drills, one combi drill and all the batteries which are all about 1 year old and all of them knackered with various electronic faults on them.

BALL'S!!

 

[Deleted member 174758]

Have you contacted the retailer? There may be a case for saying that the goods were unfit for purpose

 

[Groovejet]

Yea, they wont entertain it!!

Weird, because there's alot of stuff on web about how good Milwaukee is, with or without registering warranty.

A case i read, said that he contacted them and without any headache they got a courier to pick up tools....fixed them and returned them recorded delivery in a very speedy manor. With no cost to himself.

Just my luck,
I sent email to Milwaukee stating that ivé got 3 power tools and various batteries that have broke, and that its not out of misuse. Im not bad at electronics and have stripped them down and found the issues....Manufacture issues! Electronic failiers

Also i said i'd bought 2 more Milwaukee power tools since and in return of being loyal and sticking with them i want them to show some willing!!!
But NO.

They are top end as i've said but top end with problems, but i wasn't worried about buying others, as under warranty they are excellent.....apparently!?!

 

[cajar]

try from a different email address, but don't say you stripped them down mate. Might be worth implying that you bought them as a trial to replace makitas for your workforce or something along those lines.

 

[Groovejet]

Why
Do you mean to show that im sacking off another brand to run into the arms of Milwaukee.....To try and suck up a little bit

 

[cajar]

Make it seem like a good business decision to help you with your problem, ie the promise of more business out of it. Customer service lackies might not care about lost business, but will still want to avoid being made the scapegoat when an important customer (you) writes a letter to their CEO to inform them that they have lost a potentially lucrative account with a medium / large company.

Might still fall on deaf ears (depending on company policy) but worth a try and definitely how business works.

Has worked for me in the past several times. The key is to never threaten, but to put out clear clues that point to the above situation.

I phoned numatic with a problem with their hoover, and once they found out I was a sole trader they only advised me to return it to the shop. I phoned back a different day and explained that "we" had just bought 3 units to try them because (insert business reason here, lower cost of ownership or whatever) and that one appeared to have developed a fault, and that I apologized I couldn't be more detailed in my description of the fault because I had been told by my staff what the problem was. They couldn't have been more helpful. arranged a courier to collect it and delievered it repaired within a few days.