Dorman Battery Experiences

Wow, that could not have been fun. So the Toyota dealer took back an orange Dorman without a fuss? That would be great.
Of course, now I'm fighting with a dealer who won't sell a new battery to a "non-hybrid certified installer".

 

Absolutely. About 2 months ago, Legacy Toyota in Tallahassee, Fl, removed my 2nd Dorman battery from my Prius and installed a new OEM battery.

 

Well, I'm no hybrid-battery scientist, but... I can assure you that leadership / decisionmakers at Dorman Products certainly (and rightfully) behaved as though the buck stopped with them. It makes sense. Dorman acquired ReInvolt outright. Dorman OWNS the assembly/rebuilding of the hybrid battery-packs in question.

I have nothing but good things to say concerning how swiftly Dorman sought to resolve my problems COMPLETELY once I was able to clearly describe my position concerning my need for a THIRD battery after my original failed at around the 120k mile-marker.

 

What was the resolution with Dorman?

 

Once I presented the relevant receipts associated with my battery problems, Dorman reimbursed my expenses 100%. There was no hedging. There was no nickel & diming. They handled my expenses and concerns outright. They were clearly motivated to make things right and I respect that.

 

this would be a great thread for someone at dorman to jump into and offer advice, and maybe learn some things as well.

 

You're absolutely right. In fact, I will forward this along to Mike DiGregorio who I worked with at Dorman. He is the Director of Product Management at Dorman Products. I'm sure that, in the interest of continuous improvement, this could be a complete win-win for his company as well as the hundreds of thousands of Prius owners that will inevitably be looking for a solution to their locomotive battery when their OEMs give out.

 

you're only going to get complaints on a forum like this. it would be nice to know the success stories and how many returns they get vs satisfied customers. they may not want to give out proprietary info, but a little good will goes a long way.

over in the optima 12v battery thread, optima jim from the factory is a big help to people having trouble. that's a great way to quell peoples concerns and bring in new customers.

 

A good news Dorman service experience, I bought a replacement battery for my wife's 2003 Civic hybrid (through local Napa) in Feb 2014. It crapped out this past September and Dorman sent out a replacement in short order. The Napa folks were very helpful and dealt with Dorman directly, I just had to pull the battery and return it to Napa.

 

I will weigh in as a Dorman representative. Dorman purchased Re-Involt from me in 2013 and and I was hired as a product manager. My background includes 31 years of running my own successful independent auto repair shop in NC.
During my time running my own business, I had many bad experiences with inferior parts from various vendors and their denials that they were at fault. There were many I chose to stop buying from due to never getting compensated for defective parts, but Dorman was not one of those. The fact that Dorman does take care of their customers so well, influenced my decision to work for them. Now, after being on the inside for almost 3 years, I can say that Dorman has always had very simple instructions on how to deal with parts failures. "Take care of the customer" The Dorman team is completely dedicated to the automotive aftermarket business with a heavy focus on improving parts so common failures go away. Hybrid battery warranty rates are constantly declining as we continue to make improvements in the rebuilding process.
Dorman is now producing many hybrid specific parts beyond the battery for the Prius as well as other hybrid vehicles that help make owning a hybrid even more economical.
I have posted my contact info before, but will again here for anyone that has any questions or concerns about Dorman.

Thanks,
David Taylor
Hybrid Product Manager
Dorman Products
[email protected]

 

Thanks very much for coming on the forum, David. I 100% agree that the Dorman customer service was top-notch, and that you took care of my concerns swiftly.

 

Dave,

My ReInVolt battery is still going strong. You sent it to me when my 2004 Prius was at 194k miles and it is now at 280k miles. Thank's again for working with me and my Toyota dealer (Who installed it for me) back in April, 2011.

JeffD

 

you can email david taylor. see his contact info in post #110 above.

 

I applaud the Dorman company. Eventually, all will be good both for the consumer and manufacturer. What I am doing is putting away 30 dollars a month in a separate savings account. At the end of 8 years, I will have $2,880 (before calculating interest) and will most likely buy a new OEM battery, before any issues come up.

 

^ Oh, with the hybrid battery, this is one time I would not replace prematurely, see how far it can go.

 

Yes. And I will have back up money just in case.

 

It certainly seems as though Dorman stands behind their product, and provides good customer service. I respect that.

And I'm smart enough to know that I'm too dumb to have all the answers.

But I can't get past this simple question: why would anyone buy a used battery for any application? You can call it "remanufactured" if you'd like, but the truth is, there is no way to remanufacture a battery -- it either works or it doesn't. Sure, you have 28 cells. So if one or two or three are bad, those can be replaced. But they're being replaced with supposedly "good" USED batteries (how old are these "good" cells, how many charge/discharge cycles have they undergone?) And don't forget: the other 25 cells in the cluster are still USED. Will they last 5 years? Will they last 5 days? It's impossible to say. This is not a mechanical part, it's a chemical part.

If a 12 volt battery for your non-hybrid car cost $100, but you could get a used one for $50, would you do it? (I wouldn't!)
Many of us have cordless drills & drivers. Those batteries don't last forever. When yours fails, would you buy one on Craigslist?

An alternator can be rebuilt: they replace the bearings, the brushes, any other wear items. By its very nature, a battery cannot be rebuilt. There are no wear items.

Am I looking at this wrong?

 

Actually you are. You can use almost new gen3 battery modules to rebuild an old gen2 HV battery. Care must be taken in selecting a matched set of good modules and then balance each of the modules (make sure that all 6 cells are at the same State of Charge and and get all 28 modules to the same voltage before reassembling the battery. Dave Taylor demonstrated that it could be done reliably with his ReInVolt (which is why Dorman bought his business). It seems that Dorman has had some problems scaling up the process to produce larger numbers of batteries, but hopefully they can deal with their issues. I have no doubt that I could successfully rebuild one of our batteries for about $1000 plus some DIY time given the research that I have done since getting my ReInVolt installed in my Prius 4.5 years ago.

JeffD

 

Hi Jeff.

Thanks for your thoughtful response. My understanding was that Dorman (or any other "rebuilder") was taking the bad battery as a core, and "rebuilding" it. That is to say replacing the bad cells with good used ones. Is that not the case?

 

Dorman's process is to maintain a large inventory of recent vintage (currently Gen3) battery modules, test, rebalance and match them up in sets of 28 to use in rebuilding cores of HV batteries that were returned by customers who buy their batteries. Don't confuse that process with those that just replace bad modules.

JeffD