MBP Failed battery after 15 months

I

iaeon

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The battery on my Mackbook Pro dies without warning after anything between 4 and 30 mins

Only 15 months old and now my macbook is a desktop! 114 cycles and a capacity of 4190 mAh (supposedly) but it shuts down without warning. No graceful exit to standby either, just bye bye everything including any unsaved work! I have tried conditioning charge / discharge several times including leaving fully discharged or some hours all to no avail. Apple care says that it is outside warranty so will not replace. The odd thing is they describe on their website an almost identical problem where they WILL replace batteries for up to 2 years! (see http://www.apple.com/support/macbook_macbookpro/batteryupdate/ ) Apparently mine just has the 'wrong serial number'!

My current battery stats look as follows (the 'check battery' message has only recently appeared after my last call to Apple support) - anyone got any ideas on the 147 mA reading? This is with the MBP running on mains at the time.

Charge Information:
Charge remaining (mAh): 4190
Fully charged: Yes
Charging: No
Full charge capacity (mAh): 4190
Health Information:
Cycle count: 114
Condition: Check battery
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): 147
Voltage (mV): 12617

Any further thoughts on what to do? Complain? Buy a new (highly expensive) battery? Try some kind of 'forced discharge' with a resistor? (anyone tried that one?) Thanks.
 
A friend of mine got his battery replaced free from Apple by taking his MacBook Pro into the local Apple store and having a tech look at it. He also was able to demonstrate the sudden shutdown and loss of battery power even with a full charge in front of the Genius, so that helped, too. His battery was outside of the range of accepted serial numbers.
 
Rang support back and armed with more information had another go at persuading them to do something. This time I got put through to a more senior person who agreed that the battery was faulty and to replace it. Assuming a replacement does arrive it would seem that being persistent is key to getting a resolution.
 
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