Guys,
We had a battery pack come back to us partially melted and distended. He had a UL certified "Virtue" branded ABT charger from China. I naturally freaked out and Gary has been doing some testing. This note will be going out to battery charger customers tomorrow. I hope nobody overheats their batteries and we're of course doing something about it.
The good news is that if your charger is bad, we're going to send you a Soneil free. If not, we'll upgrade you to the Soneil below cost, $30 + shipping. This may take a bit of time to figure get done. Please do the test described below and take precautions, ie. unplug your charger if you're going out of town.
Seth
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Dear Customer,
*** Please check your charger function to avoid possible battery melt-down ***
Last week I was notified by a customer that his SLA battery kit using the blocky ABT charger (some of them have the Virtue logo on them), overcharged. The customer noticed a strange smell and found the charger chugging away when it should have been trickling. The batteries heated up and began to expand visibly. Fortunately, the customer was home, disconnected the unit and no damage occurred.
This kind of melt-down is not good and not something we anticipated with a UL listed charger that we sourced from Powerstream.com and then from the Chinese manufacturer directly.
Since hearing of this problem, we tested our existing charger stock and found that some units did not seem to drop from full to trickle charge as they should. This is particularly disconcerting since we advised customers to leave the charger charging continuously.
We would like to you test your charger. If it tests “bad” please discontinue use immediately and notify us please. If this happens, we will send you a free Soneil charger (valued $79 + shipping). All battery kit customers, including those that received non-defective ABT chargers, may upgrade to the Soneil using this $50 coupon code: DODD-ABT-UPGRD. The new Soneil charger, terminated for your wire harness, can be found at
http://store.virtueaudio.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=DODD%2DSONEIL%2D28v%2D240x%2D1.
Moving forward, I am discontinuing the ABT charger and raising the kit price to $179 so that we can offer Soneil standard. Please contact Cami Terpstra (cami@virtueaudio.com) to handle all transactions related to this upgrade offer.
Very sincerely,
Gary Dodd
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Charger test
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If you are leaving the charger connected all the time, turn off the amplifier and make sure the amp goes green and that there is no temperature rise on the batteries. If you run the batteries down and then connect the charger make sure that it is red during the charging process, and that there is no temp rise on the batteries. After some amount of time has passed (5-8 hours if fully depleted) the light should go green and stay green indicating a full charge. At no time during the charging process should the batteries become hot!
If the charger never goes green or flashes read and green and/or makes noise, we suspect a faulty charger. Please shut off the charger and DO NOT use it any longer.
