Prius battery finally died after 10 years and 220,000 miles

what you bought for $900 is basically the battery you turned in as a core....with a $40 replacement module in it. Most of the time, these fly by night repairs don't last.

 

You can tell if that's what you bought by opening the case and checking if all the serial numbers are in sequential order. All the modules should have similar serial numbers.

It's highly suspicious to have a 2009 battery with such low mileage. Also it's rare any wrecking yard offering 1 year warranties on batteries

 

unfortunate, glad youre back on the road. please keep us posted. all the best!

 

Good luck to you on the salvaged battery. I did something similar a few years and 50K miles ago, except I pulled the battery out of the wrecked vehicle myself (cost $800), then sold my core to a hobbyist ($300). I was a little lucky with both transactions, I thought, with many thanks to Craigslist.

 

Hey guys I just figured I'd chime in here. There has been a company running a Craigslist ad in our area for several months that always advertises the same 2009 Prius battery with 29,000 miles on it. He normally runs the same ad in about 4 or 5 different cities at a time. I'm sure this is the same one the op responded to.

Craigslist Ad by Texas Hybrid Batteries posted Oct 26, 2015 at 9:42 AM

How many 2009 Prius batteries with 29,000 miles could there be?

 

Yep, I have seen the same adds in the upper midwest. Your old battery will be the next 29,000 mile battery they sell.

 

I did some internet searching on this company a little while back and found out the guys name is Michael Nouri and he's from Owensville MO. He used to run an online parts business called XVIPERS. Turns out the Viper guys have a forum like PriusChat and they have whole threads of members who he's ripped off and stolen money from. Unfortunately it looks like he's found a new group of people to take advantage of now.

 

Ironically he told me the same 29,000 mile battery story here less than a week ago.

So tempting to have him show up at my shop, open up the pack, and call his bluff.

Sidenote:
The photo in his ads aren't even his.
That picture of the woman replacing a battery in the red Prius is hybrid car extraordinaire, Carolyn Coquilette, of Luscious Garage in San Francisco.
It saddens me to see her picture used in such and unscrupulous way.

 

Dodge Aries K,
Can you share with us the address of the company you dealt with.
Also, the name on the check/payment you made?

Did you play via credit card?

 

Reconditioning worked great on my 158,000 2006. Cost was $490 for the charger/discharger. Now I can do it when it happens on the wife's car too!

 

Tell you what, Dodge Aries KY , I'd be willing to drive down to you and pop open the pack to confirm that the numbers are sequential.

Cool Troy, the problem here isn't with reconditioning, the problem is that it seems suspicious that every battery the craigslist guy sells is from a 29,000 mile car. In fact he has another one for sale right now. Seems unlikely.

 

if you invite him over, make sure you're packing.

 

Hey coolttroy,
Glad you were able to get your car going again. I'm curious what kind of symptoms you had when your battery died in your 2006. Do you know what the trouble codes were? Do you know which battery blocks were acting up? I'm just curious because depending on the type of failure sometimes those grid chargers can't fix your battery. I wouldn't want people to get confused about what they do.

I have a handful of customers that have the HA Grid Chargers and this is the way the conversation normally goes when I get there to replace their battery.

me - "Oh I see you've got a grid charger, cool. How's that working for ya?"
them - "It didn't fix anything, wish I could get my $500 back. Do you know anybody that wants to buy a grid charger?"

You wrote that your wife's car was a 2007. I would start conditioning that battery now because if you wait until it starts showing symptoms it's probably gonna be to late.

 

I have had my pictures lifted also. I use a Hoyer lift to move batteries in and out of cars. I have seen pictures of my lift and workbench used on Craigslist in other cities and states. To search Craigslist nationwide I use SearchTempest: Search all of Craigslist nationwide & more . With a little searching it is easy to spot scams.

The truly sad result of scammers is that they can ruin the reputation of a whole industry. Matt from Texas Hybrid Batteries has the figured out the ideal business model for battery replacement. That is local, independent, mobile installation. Combine that with good quality control and pricing that makes sense for both the customer and seller and you have a product that the national companies can not match.

Brad

 

Hoyer Lift....nice. 1 trip to the hospital with a strained back will pay for that thing LOL

 

Man, this really blows. I did some digging on this one after XVipers came up in the string. It is amazing just how many dishonest business people are out there. Let us hope that Dodge Aries K gets the charge stopped and gets a good battery in the end.