I posted this a few days ago on the Mighty thread:
"Hello, all! First-time poster, and with all I may lay out here, I'm not exactly sure where this post belongs! I'll leave it to mod, and forgive my newness, please. Maybe here, maybe with Crafty thread? maybe Pax 2?
I own a Crafty, and my Pax was recently upgraded to a Pax 2. Love both, to be sure. After 2 years of Pax, I sent it in complaining that screens wouldn't stay put; they offered replacement unit (onyx only). Said my trouble could not be confirmed, but did I know the temp switch was stuck? Anyway, they also offered upgrade discount of $80 towards a Pax 2, and after a couple of hours skimming the Pax 2 thread (thank you!), I decided that the new pax looked like a significant improvement. This has been confirmed by my use. It works great!
But this is the MIGHTY thread! I saw, back a page or so, a warranty declined due to battery over-use. I was also declined, though on my Crafty. My first Crafty (serial #5xxx) lasted 2 months, about 80 hours and started overheating, shutting down, etc., so I sent it back. Very quickly came a replacement (#11xxx). That one lasted 4 months, between 130-140 hours, and started getting pretty hot, then charging became intermittent - while on charger, blue light shut off, sometimes back on, etc. I sent it in, and asked about upgrade program they might have. Seems a Mighty might suit my needs better - I especially thought this when I learned that
a Mighty can be used as a pure plug-in.
I was extremely disappointed with the call I got from S&B America. I was told that, while very impressive, my use had exceeded the battery manufacturer's lifetime number of charge cycles. (I'm paraphrasing here).
The lifetime charge cycle allowance is 8xx, and I had used 9xx, and so, he could not offer me the $80 upgrade to the Mighty. (btw, I had paid the full original price, $399, for Crafty, and now that is the price for Mighty...). He did offer a $100 discount on upgrade to a Mighty, but I declined; was not prepared to lay out $299 cash. So, I was quoted a battery replacement, at $70 (even though I had seen published price on website was lower than that, I didn't argue the point, I was kinda seething about the 900+ charge cycles!). I agreed to the $70 battery swap, and he said I'd also get the new firmware (2.7 at the time) and the new beefed up shell/housing, of course, and because I'm a swell customer, a brand new cooling unit. Yipee!!
I sat back and soon came what I fully expected - a new, sealed-box Crafty (#23xxx, ver 2.7). All that talk about fixing the old one was out the window...including the quote, 'cause the invoice was for $50. Go figure.
The irony is not lost on me, that S&B sent me a brand new Crafty, yet would not offer a Mighty for $80, and not for the 80 plus 50 or 70 more; nope, $299 cash, and not get Crafty back, either. I believe the only change might have been re-setting the clock on the warranty. Instead, I reside on the Crafty merry-go-round.
Now, about 'abuse' of the battery. The cs rep started a brief song and dance about a charging cycle being defined as "something like" when the battery is charged more than 25% or so. He backed off being specific about this, but did say that he knew the Crafty was not a "smart" device, and so, it was not good for the battery to charge too often (i.e., should wait til battery is down, then fully charge - including remove from charger soon after, please! and don't let it sit there overnight! Holy crap.
When I opened the box on Pax 2, some of the first, sparse words I saw were, "Pax 2 is Smart". Almost no instructions at all (online manual). Pax encourages frequent charging. S & B imposes a penalty for frequent charging. The Pax 1 that I owned was 2 years old, no battery issues yet. The 'abused' Crafty was 4 months old. My apparent sin was religiously returning the unit to the charger. But my math still can't attribute all the 9xx charge cycles to my regular use. I speculate that, when the unit/battery turned faulty, it was racking up useless charge cycles just sitting there. S & B didn't seem to be too concerned that their metric for measuring this 'abuse' might be faulty.
Did I mention that I love both the Crafty and the Pax 2?
"
I'll just clarify here that S & B did not imply that I abused the Crafty (that's my emotional embellishment). They simply said I charged it too many times. I don't believe their cycle count is accurate.
