Energizer, Walmart are sued for conspiring to raise battery prices | Hacker News Reader

Energizer, Walmart are sued for conspiring to raise battery prices

reuters.com

88 pointsmfiguiere43 comments

Battery prices are a racket. I was shocked when I saw the price of coin cells at a local store: a two pack of coin cell batteries cost 7€. So instead of the coin cells, I bought an electric candle for 1€, took out the coin cell, and threw away the electric candle.

Unfortunately, with the current trend of cheap electronics switching away from standard batteries and towards custom-sized, permanently soldered-in lithium cells (sometimes without the ability to recharge them - why this is still legal is beyond me [1]), you won't be able to keep doing that for long.

On the flip side, a lithium cell salvaged from such a device is going to be a lot more useful than a single-use coin cell if you can solder. There are readily available modules that will take any of these batteries and provide a charging port and an output with overcurrent and undervoltage protection, ready to be wired into anything capable of running on 3.7V [2].

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI https://youtube.com/watch?v=PsJMj7FtroY

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=M88e1r8nvYk

That dates all the way back to at least the Dreamcast. When I work on them I desolder the old battery and solder in a socket. Makes replacing the battery a lot easier.

True, but the thing is, the battery in that 1 euro candle was most likely not a name brand one with a long life, like a Varta, Panasonic, Duracell or Energizer, but a no-name one that won't last very long.

That's what they said at the store when I complained about the pricing, but I doubt it. It's a lithium coin cell, I doubt there's huge variance like this.

I searched the internet a bit for capacity measurements of cheap coin cells, and the only thing I found is [1], which shows that the discharge curve of a cheap coin cell was almost exactly the same as the one from the data sheet of a name brand cell.

Also, a comment on the page [2] says that name brand cells cost 25c when buying 100s, so a price of 7€ for 2 seems to be enough of a margin to call it a racket.

[1]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/219906

[2]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/219847/testi...

>It's a lithium coin cell, I doubt there's huge variance like this.

Anecdotally, from my own experience, the differences are real and huge.

The no-name CR 2032 cell I bought from the discount store lasted 3-6 months in my room thermometer, while the name brand one closer to 2 years.

>seems to be enough of a margin to call it a racket

I'm not trying to justify the racket pricing, I'm just saying the differences between those no-name Chinese batteries you can find in 1 euro LED candles and good cells from a reputable brand is real and palpable.

OK, so that's one anecdote saying there's a difference, and one anecdote saying they are the same. Would be sweet if someone bought a couple of different CR2032 cells and tested them.

I'm not convinced the branded ones last any longer. Typically they don't even quote their capacity.

If you are willing to have to change cells 3 to 5 times as often you might consider rechargeable coin cells. There are for example rechargeable 2032 cells that go for around $15-20 for 4 with a charger.

The catch is that their capacities are from about 45 mAh to 75 mAh depending on brand. A non-rechargeable 2032 is around 225 mAh.

Once you have the rechargeable cells and the charger they are essentially free for the rest of their lifetime. In the European country with the highest electricity prices the cost to charge a 45 mAh cell 5 times or a 75 mAh cell 3 times would be under 1/2000th of a Euro.

With the price of individual non-rechargeable cells being around the same price as rechargeable cells plus charger it is almost a no-brainer if you are OK with having to change cells more frequently in your devices.

BTW, the math is similar for AA and AAA batteries, except there the rechargeable batteries themselves cost 3 or 4 times as much as non-rechargeable batteries. So with these if you are only using a handful of batteries a year you might never break even switching to rechargeables.

Like the rechargeable coin cells rechargeable AA and AAAs are essentially free to operate once you have them. Recharging a 2000 mAh NiMH AA like a Panasonic Eneloop would take less than 1/800th of a Euro in the most expensive European country.

Lifetimes of the Eneloops seem pretty good. I've got some 1st generation AA and AAAs that are at least 15 years old (I don't remember exactly when I bought them, but I know I bought them at Circuit City which went out of business in 2008) and some 4th generation AAs that I bought in 2014.

Pretty much all my AA and AAA battery use since 2008 has been on these.

The 1st gen AAs now mostly have capacities in the 1800-1900 mAh range, which is slightly under spec (spec is min 1900 mAh, typical 2000 mAh). The 1st gen AAAs are currently in the 790-840 mAh range (spec is min 750 mAh, typical 800 mAh). The 4th gen AAs are mostly in the 1900-2000 mAh range (spec is min 1900 mAh, typical 2000 mAh).

Of the 24 1st gen AAs I bought, 2 have died. Of the 16 1st gen AAAs I bought, 3 have died. Of the 16 4th gen AAs I bought the 15 I know of are still fine.

Digikey has all of the common coin cells you need, for prices that range from USD 0.50 to 3.50, which is to say FAAAR cheaper than at Walmart.

It is a name brand too (Panasonic)

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/panasonic-bsg/CR2...

Ebay is better. You used to be able to get 10 for 0.99 shipped from China.

They have gone up 200-300%, but now they ship from USA.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cr2032&_sop=15

I would be wary of counterfeits. I got counterfeit Duracell 9V batteries from a well-known online retailer who co-mingles inventory. They dropped to about 5.5V after a month of use and, on closer inspection, were made of subtly different materials.

Not an issue if you buy unbranded, although I don't think there is anything special about "Duracell" batteries in terms of construction or quality control.

Store bought Duracell AA batteries (unlikely to be fake) have a tendency to leak and destroy devices in my experience.

Do you have any more details on how you identified them as counterfeit? I guess they looked good enough at first glance, so the details must be quite subtle.

I’m not confident of my ability to identify counterfeit goods so I have greatly curtailed purchases from that well-known retailer that commingles inventory. Pretty much anything that might risk health or safety is something I’m scared to buy from them, which eliminates most items that use electricity - even in low voltages, as batteries can have hazardous failure modes.

The battery died very quickly so I was inspecting the "best by" date to see if I had a bad batch. I then compared it to some new batteries bought at a physical store. I noticed the font and some small details were subtly different. The base plate (opposite the terminals) was plastic with a fine texture on the real product, and simple black cardboard on the fake. The stamping and forming of the metal cover was more crude on the fake as well, and the trademark copper was duller.

However, there's no way I would have noticed any of these without a genuine comparison, especially if it was still in the wrapping.

This was for a smoke detector, so definitely a safety issue!

Fun fact: the reason we get quality Chinese components is because we get the ones that pass QA in factories in China and India. Buy a TV in Eastern Europe, buy a TV in the US. The one from Walmart will be fine 99% of the time, won't have a small crack, won't have random transistors pop in a year.

Buy one in Poland or Bulgaria or Russia, and you have about a 75% chance it'll power up at all, and about a 50% chance it'll work in 5 years. Same TV.

Something is made in China or India. About half of the production is perfect and gets sent to "The West." Then about half of that is "it's probably fine, but didn't pass QA." That last 25% is straight up dangerous and defective, and that's what you're buying on ebay. As an example, half the phone screens for iPhones don't pass QA. Those are the ones that get sold on ebay.

Now, for most cases, you battery will simply live half as long. For a few cases, it'll leak, light on fire, or overvolt your circuit and destroy your device. Then all those savings on batteries you've had over the years will be wiped out and then some.

So you are saying that there's a QA process that somehow determines which devices will have a transistor pop in a year, and then they send those to eastern Europe? That sounds... unlikely. But then again, I know nothing of chinese QA. My assumption would be that it varies greatly between factories. There's cheap stuff from China, and there's expensive stuff from China, and the quality varies accordingly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning

You don't need to know anything about the Chinese QA process. This is how QA is done for literally everything. What exactly do you thing QA is? The cheap batteries you buy from ebay are batteries that were rejected to sell at a store in the west, and rejected to sell at a store in the east.

I'm not trying to change your mind on anything here, as you seem to have your mind set before bothering to spend even a minute looking up something you stated yourself you know nothing about.

Wouldn't QA be done on components before assembly? How do faulty components end up getting assembled anyway?

It is depending whether the manufacturer demands stringent test for their components. Corner must be cut to allow something to be made cheap. This is the same for PCB used in TV/computer, or battery.

I don't believe this. I think western companies simply have higher QA standards so they qualify to be imported and this results in higher quality even if the product is manufactured in China. Meanwhile products for the Chinese market must pass less stringent QA. A company that would sell products that don't pass QA is committing fraud.

so you believe that the close to 50% of factory output that doesn't pass QA gets destroyed or fixed by a company in China, instead of selling it on ebay? oh my sweet summer child..

yes, it gets sold on the Chinese market as well. but we're talking about someone in the west buying the same component from China on ebay, that they would buy at a store in the west. It's the same component - it's just one that didn't pass QA to make it to the store here.

Yes, the "company" selling these products is committing fraud. welcome to china.

There are /very/ few realistic failure modes for a primary battery that lead to overvoltage.

No one said overvoltage is a failure mode. You took a list of things that can go wrong, for some reason created a cause-and effect between two random things on the list, just so you could correct someone?

a 9V battery should produce around 9V. There are plenty of recheargable 9V batteries sold that are over 9V, because 9V is either using lithium or nicad in series - none of which add up to 9V. The 9V lithium batteries I buy have a tiny voltage converter and deliver 9V. If I order that same battery from a random ebay source, they can easily save on the voltage converter and deliver 10.5V for example.

More to the point of my example, a bunch come off the production line with a Broken voltage converter. They don't pass QA and get sold on ebay.

Yes, I have bought those, as well as ones from Amazon. Either they are of very low quality (only lasts 3-6 months in my car keyfob) or just fake.

I was pointing out a cheap source for quality batteries.

> 1,976,006 In Stock

Wow!

It’s pretty common for there to be a ‘minimum advertised price’ (MAP) where a brand can cut retailers off if they advertise a price below it - this is why so many stores will have the exact same price on a given product and why you’ll sometimes see the ‘lower price in cart’ message.

It sounds like the issue here is that Walmart managed to get Energizer to have a higher MAP price, but I’m not sure how much more collusion-y that is than MAP prices in general.

There are all sorts of games brands/retailers play with these. It also wouldn’t surprise me at all if Walmart avoided language that went as far as collusion, but did make clear they needed a certain margin and were willing to pay a higher price.

The article makes a direct reference to "price at checkout" though it's not quite clear to me if that wording was intentional. If they really mean "price at checkout" then we are talking about blatant price fixing that goes beyond MAP and is quite serious.

>Walmart rivals allegedly risked higher wholesale prices or being cut off by Energizer, the largest U.S. disposable battery maker, if they charged less at checkout than Walmart, the world's largest retailer.

This story is very confusing and I don't understand how this would raise prices.

If Energizer batteries cost more than Duracell people will buy Duracell, since they are utterly interchangeable.

So how can they rise prices without involving Duracell?

>Energizer agreed "under pressure from Walmart" to inflate wholesale battery prices for other retailers starting around January 2018, and require those retailers not to undercut Walmart on price.

If successful, hopefully this gives them freedom to investigate WalMart for this kind of practice with all of their vendors?

It’s amazing that Energizer is still around given their product it utterly commoditizable.

Walmart has already raised prices on juice that I like to buy by ~40%

They are profeteering on the current situation.

They need to be cancelled.

When a box of sugar water (juice) goes up for no reason, people need to be accountable.

I have a solution, and its weird AI.

I cant explain it now, but imagine you had full transparency to your supply chain.

Color Code said Document™

> ...imagine you had full transparency to your supply chain.

As a layman, this would be an information deluge that I would be utterly unqualified to evaluate... even _if_ I had the time required to examine the supply chains for the hundreds (or tens of thousands, depending on how you split out the BOMs) of separate things I purchase each month.

As a hypothetical exec at Wal-Mart, I almost certainly have the power to order potential suppliers to reveal more than enough information about _their_ supply chains to satisfy every bit of interest I possess.

DM me

I have an idea you can run with, but we need to have a discussion... while we are pausing AI on military 'applications' - economic opportunities exist in a way...

> DM me

No.

> ...we need to have a discussion...

We do not.

Pretty pls DM me? :C=

How could I possibly say "no" to a lil shrimp emoji? >:3

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-pr...

Look at those juicy sub 2% profit margins. I am sure the employees of tech companies on this forum earning 20%+ profit margins will be all ears.

2% on $612B a year is still 10 digits of profit. I think most companies would be happy making a billion a month in profit for a commodity, don't you?

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