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Hybrid battery "revitalization" - hybridbattery911.com in Georgia?

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by Jason Antman, May 11, 2017.

  1. Jason Antman

    Jason Antman Junior Member

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    The battery in my 05 bit the dust last week and in a Google search for replacement options (or anyone knowledgeable in the Atlanta, Georgia area), I came by Hybrid Battery Repair & Replacement - Toyota Prius & Camry that claims to "revitalize" batteries. Their pitch is that they bring out a battery they've "revitalized" and swap it out for yours, then do their stuff on your battery. Their pricing is based on length of warranty.

    So... after doing a bit of research, I'm about 90% sure that this LLC is a complete scam, given the little I could dig up about the business (which has only existed for a few months), the lots I could dig up about the owner, and his aggressive phone pitch (saying he might be willing to buy the car off of me if I didn't want to replace the battery, his extreme confidence in his product and suggestion that I buy a battery with a 90-day warranty at a discounted price even though it's "the same product" as the others, and his seemingly complete lack of knowledge about what he actually *does* to the batteries, aside from the fact that his "very expensive equipment" "revitalizes" the batteries to 95%+ of original capacity through 2 cycles of charge and discharge.

    Has anyone else heard of this company? Am I right that this sounds just a bit too good to be true?

    And, on the other hand, does anyone have a recommendation for someone competent with hybrids in the Atlanta area, other than a Toyo dealer?
     
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  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    you're probably correct. my biggest thing with companies like this is, if the batteries are any good, why do you have to pay more for a longer warranty? seems to me they are just using that extra money to pay for the extra swap outs they are going to have to cover.
    if i were in your position, i would decide how long i'm going to keep the car. based on the time frame, i'd go with a dorman, or new.
     
  3. Jason Antman

    Jason Antman Junior Member

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    So unfortunately how long I'm going to keep the car is the problem... I'm recently divorced. My current lease is up at the end of the month and I'll be moving. The car desperately needs front bearings, and I had been planning to just hope it would make it a few months with only routine maintenance (and a bit of a whine from the bearings), and then replace it. So... I guess I'm honestly looking for an inexpensive solution that'll keep it on the road for a few months, until I have my life (and finances) together a bit more.

    I got a quote of $1200 for a Dorman, plus about $200 labor, which isn't terrible (granted the KBB on the car is about $2400), but another $700 for the bearings.

    Agreed about the warranty pricing. Also, for what it's worth, this company seems to only have existed for 4 months, and the single registered officer of the company appears to be associated with a string of questionable-sounding businesses... though I suppose it's also possible he just gets into industries that seem hot and moves on when they cool down...
     
  4. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    look around some more, but any reasonably qualified company will be similar to dorman. rebuilding a pack properly takes a long time. and even then, it's an iffy situation.
     
  5. Jason Antman

    Jason Antman Junior Member

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  6. WilDavis

    WilDavis Senior Member

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    ...anything which sounds "...too good to be true!" usually is exactly that!
     
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  7. Hybrid Battery 911

    Hybrid Battery 911 New Member

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    Certificate of Organization.png
    Typically I don't like to give valuable time in response to a "shoot from the hip" post, but when someone attacks your company and your character when all you were trying to do is help them, the truth needs to come forth. Glad he left a "10%" opening for the truth to shine forth. The better route for this potential customer to have taken would have been to ask a simple request, "Do you have references"? Remember folks, the internet is an open forum to say anything, about anyone, at any time. This does not make it true. Anyone with a Hybrid Battery issue, please feel free to reach out if you need help, as we have many satisfied customers. We do not have one complaint from an "actual customer". We are more than willing to have you contact them directly and have them share with you their experience with Hybrid Battery 911. Thank you!
     
  8. srellim234

    srellim234 Senior Member

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    You may well be very legitimate but your post and your website does little to instill confidence to people somewhat knowledgable about their hybrids or being able to check with people who have been intimately involved with the Prius for a long time.

    Posting your LLC certificate is meaningless. Anyone can file papers, pay the fee and get one. The OP acknowledged you are an LLC.

    You cite no hybrid credentials whatsoever.

    From your website all I can ascertain is that you swap out batteries packs, use something similar to a Prolong charger/discharger on the old pack and then install it on someone else's car while touting it as "100% revitalized", hoping that recharged old pack will last 8 months without throwing a code. Do you also stress to your customers that especially the older battery packs you install should be maintained regularly?

    How about posting actual analysis of what that 100% means? Is it 100% of new (full voltage of each individual cell as originally sold by Toyota))? Is it 100% of what is your opinion an old used pack should recharge to (which varies from pack to pack)?

    A lot of companies have offered similar battery replacements over the years. They seemed very legitimate but disappeared once enough warranty work cut into the quick money they had banked and cut into their supply of old packs they were acquiring for free through swapouts.

    Sorry for being so skeptical but this Prius owner is. Unfortunately, because of the industry you have placed yourself in, you will have to stand the test of time and prove yourself before I would consider your services. You haven't even been in business long enough to have your initial customers' warranties expire and praise how well their batteries are still performing.
     
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  9. bobzchemist

    bobzchemist Active Member

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    I'm not sure I'd consider this a scam, per se.

    I agree with Srellim234 - from the website description, the service this guy is providing is most likely a Prolong reconditioning or something similar. But, by swapping out the battery pack, it looks like he's found a way around installing the Prolong battery harness that would be needed for future in-car reconditioning. This seems to lock you into using his service - which isn't cheap.

    On the other hand, by pulling the old battery out of the car and then reconditioning it later, he is taking on the risk that some of the battery cells need replacing, or that the entire battery is dead completely.

    When I was looking for a used Prius in the Atlanta area last year, I spoke a lot with the few car dealers here that specialize in used Prii. From those discussions, I found out that there's at least one company/mechanic in the area who diagnoses and replaces bad cells, and for less money than the cost of replacing the entire battery. I didn't get more details, but it shouldn't be impossible to find out more now.

    So, as I see it, you have a few options:
    1) Install a new battery
    2) Install a reconditioned used battery
    3) Install a used battery from a wrecked Prius
    4) Get your existing battery diagnosed and repaired
    5) Buy the Prolong Kit and resurrect/recondition the battery yourself.

    I found two things on Craigslist that might be worth looking into:

    Toyoto Pruis Hybrid Battery Repiar - $500 - auto parts - by owner - vehicle automotive sale

    Prius HV Traction Hybrid Battery 04-09 Gen2 - auto parts - by owner - vehicle automotive sale
     
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  10. TMR-JWAP

    TMR-JWAP Senior Member

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    True or not, I don't know, but it doesn't take much of a google search to understand how the OP was led down this thought path.
     
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  11. Jason Antman

    Jason Antman Junior Member

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    To everyone who offered advice on the battery, I should have updated this thread sooner, but honestly I forgot about it. After weighing my various options and my financial situation I decided to go with a re-manufactured Dorman battery for approximately $1,300 with a 3 year warranty. I probably could have spent a little less but as far as I'm concerned it's an insurance policy, it would be amazingly valuable for me if the battery would last another year and a half or more, and I simply felt more comfortable with a warranty backed buy a large national company. The original replacement failed in about a month, threw codes when I was on my way home from grocery shopping Saturday morning and was reporting 2 weak blocks. I had it in the shop first thing Monday morning and had a warranty replacement in it by noon on Tuesday, at no cost to me. The second one seems to be doing much better so far.

    Hybrid Battery 911, my question was never about your ability to register a corporation with the state of Georgia. In fact, most of what worries me is exactly the opposite.

    I usually don't make it a habit to reply to something that feels like it could turn into a flame war, but in the event that you are an honest, legitimate business just trying to get started, I suppose sharing my experience might help you plan how to instill confidence in other customers. I'd originally been expecting a reply from you much sooner, but I suppose that you don't share your hybrid expertise with the community the way many other Prius-related companies on here do. So, hoping that you're right and I'm wrong and this doesn't just help you rip people off...

    I found your website on Google, and it looks quite professional and well-written, though I was a bit uneasy about the pricing model of paying for warranty length; that very much made me worry that you know the batteries will fail again soon, and the pricing is essentially your own "insurance policy" against having to go out-of-pocket to replace a battery.

    I sent an email request for information and we spoke on the phone at length. You were very professional and really talked up your service, and even went so far as to discuss buying my car for your daughter if I didn't want to replace the battery. But you were very guarded about telling me anything about the actual process you use for "revitalization", other than that it involves "very expensive equipment". I'd read through well over a hundred pages of posts on this forum on the topic of Gen II rebuilds and was expecting you to share at least some level of technical detail, similar to professional rebuilders from other parts of the country that I'd spoken to. However, the complete lack of technical detail (even when I pointedly asked) made me very uncomfortable and the mention of buying my car for your daughter - having never seen it - made me wonder if you were just trying to increase my perception of the car's value and push me towards using your service.

    Your website says, "Our trained hybrid technician will use our advanced proprietary computer diagnostics to test your Toyota hybrid battery at your home or office." Given that you answered the phone yourself, I expected that you would be able to carry on a technical conversation as a trained hybrid technician, skilled in the use of advanced proprietary computer diagnostics.

    At some point in the next few days I called you back, and you answered your phone without announcing your business name. We discussed my car situation for a while and you were very nice and helpful and reassuring again, but what really stuck with me is that I called you and had to ask if I had the right number, the phone wasn't answered as "Hybrid Battery 911".

    My next step was to look up the domain registration information for Hybrid Battery Repair & Replacement - Toyota Prius & Camry. I found that it was registered to you, Roger Kealy of Canton, GA, and was only registered on January 5, 2017. That made me highly suspicious, especially since this was in early May, and your company had been in business significantly shorter than even your shortest warranty. My initial thought was, "what confidence do I have that Roger will still be in business in 9 months to honor my warranty?"

    At that point, I still wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe you were an ASE certified mechanic who was trying to forge out on your own as a hybrid specialist, or maybe a hobbyist who wanted to make some extra money (with a really flashy website). I tried to no avail to find any reference to you or your company on this and many other Prius and Hybrid forums.

    Failing all that, I decided to google the phone number on your website, and the only references I could find to it were on your own domain (hybridbattery911.com) and the facebook page of an IT services company, TerraCloud, Inc., who I assume had the number before you.

    When I googled the number you gave me, however, it led me to "We Buy Gold And Silver" in Woodstock, GA, the Better Business Bureau profile of Georgia Gold Refinery, LLC, and finally to your LinkedIn profile which doesn't say anything about Hybrid Battery 911 but lists you as the owner of Aroma Solutions LLC, a company that makes "the number one aromatherapy neck wrap on the market today" and lists your summary as "Extensive Salves and Management Background", but nothing technical or mechanical, and no skills listed outside of the business and management sphere.

    That made me a bit suspicious. Lastly (and I probably wouldn't have even written this reply if it weren't for the image you posted), I googled your name and found a public records directory listing 17 previous addresses and a handful of businesses. That prompted me to do a search with the Georgia Corporations Division for business entities listing you as an officer. That was the real clincher that made me decide not to pursue this, and to be very, very wary. The results included:
    I suppose my use of the word "scam" might be considered overly harsh by some. I didn't think you were going to try to sell me a box of rocks instead of a battery, my worry was about (a) your company existing long enough to enforce the warranty, and (b) whether the warranties were in good faith and technically sound, or whether you were selling a product that a competent technician would have reason to believe would only last approximately the length of the warranty.

    Customer testimonials are great, but for a product like this, they're only of value if the people have had the battery for at least the period of the warranty. If you're looking to break into this business and want to market to people who know their cars as more than a magic moving box, I'd highly recommend dispensing with the "advanced proprietary technology" smokescreen and tell us what you're actually doing. At the time that I started looking into this, if you just flat-out told me that you were going to replace the failed cell with a $40 one from EBay and then but the pack on a Hybrid Automotive Prolong charger, I very well may have jumped at that...
     
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  12. TMR-JWAP

    TMR-JWAP Senior Member

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    Jason...........all I can say is........well done. (y)

    My search had similar results. You nailed the write up..Just the facts, jack.

    Honesty is the best policy.
     
  13. amyh1965

    amyh1965 New Member

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    I came across this discussion today, now five years after you questioned the business model. They seem to have survived. They have 6 BBB complaints over last three years, and an A+ rating. They have modified their warranty model I can see. Although I expect to receive a product that has no problems, I understand that they are selling a product which is much like any other reconditioned product. A company can go over everything, honestly believe they’ve done all the right things, but in the end there are bound to be hidden issues sometimes. Some you should expect them to have found, but they are bound to also run into used batteries which have been damaged or abused by some creative dummy in a new or inconceivable way. I try to keep that in mind because I often will purchase open box or reconditioned items. In the long run I think I have come out ahead in the net of all the items.
    It doesn’t sound unreasonable to me to pay $20 a month or so to get a battery for an 11-yo car for $1500. It would cost me $3500 at the dealership. It will be over 8 years before that would be a bad deal for me, eh? By then I’ll have a 20- year old car (actually, I hope I will have upgraded!) I read through ALL the warranty terms, and if it were me, would also exclude acts known to damage the battery. The reason mine died isn’t a problem with the battery, it’s because the combination engine blew up (undiscovered/disclosed coolant issues), and it sat unused a long time before we could put in a whole new engine.
    So, I’ve been looking into their history and reputation. Have not found an unusual number of negative posts. Since this thread shows up when searching for complaints, but is primarily speculative, I thought it might interest someone how the speculation held up over time. I’ll come back after I get my battery to update again on how it performs.
     
  14. David Sower

    David Sower New Member

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    Hybrid Battery 911 is not an honorable company. They claim to revitalize the batteries 100%. But as my story will show, this is not true.



    In early November I had them replace the battery in my 2007 Prius. The cost for this was $1299. The technician did his job quickly and all seemed well.



    After barely three months, by early February the battery had failed and my dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. My life was busy and intense and I did not get this problem reported to them until late March.



    At every step of the process, I received massive texts which I had to wade through to determine what information was actually being requested. It used to be that auto parts stores like Advance Auto provided extensive free engine fault readings. Many have switched to lower quality equipment that does not provide the thorough information requested. I finally paid a local repair shop for readings and was told that they were not sufficient. After several hours of traveling to the next town over and trying several parts shops, I was able to get the information.



    Let me add that I have an OBD II scanner and use both Torque Lite and Dr. Prius. Readings from my scanner which I sent, clearly showed hybrid battery errors and Dr. Prius clearly showed one blade of the battery to be failing. I was told that they do not accept any readings from Dr. Prius app. I have no reason to believe this information was incorrect.



    They then said that I hadn’t driven enough miles to meet the requirements of their warranty and that I would have to pay $699 to get a replacement. I was aware of the warranty requirement but assumed it would be based on my average driving per year which should have been sufficient. I live in a somewhat mountainous area and the Prius is not a great car on hills in slippery weather so I also use my Highlander Hybrid frequently in the winter. But my comments about this fell on deaf ears. The Prius was driven every week and days it was driven would be at least 50 miles. This should be more than enough to keep a good battery in working condition.



    I complained and was eventually contacted by the owner of the company who offered my a $200 discount to $499 but stated that they would not continue my warranty as they were sure my driving mileage would never meet their requirements. So they would give me another battery but I would be on my own with no reason to think the next replacement would be any better than the first. They also offered me an upgraded premier pack for an additional $1498 which added to my previous investment would basically have been more than the car is worth.



    There was no reason for a good battery to fail after such a short time. I pointed out that I could have met their requirements by taking one long trip and then leaving the car parked for months, which certainly would have been far worse for the battery but they couldn’t even be bothered to respond to my remarks.



    They sold me a faulty battery that was clearly not “100% revitalized” and are using the mileage as an excuse. And their claims for lifetime coverage are clearly false as they have refused to continue my warranty. And to get the lifetime coverage you need to pay $20 every month.



    Don’t be fooled by their promises.
     
  15. TMR-JWAP

    TMR-JWAP Senior Member

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    Yup, you got shanked. A battery built with poor modules that have too much self-discharge. If you dig a bit, you may notice most, if not all, the "rebuild" companies have a disclaimer in their wonderful warranties that it is void if the car sits unused for 30 days. A good module will hold a satisfactory charge for many MONTHS, sometimes even a year+, not 30 days. I've taken one of my batteries that had been on the shelf over a year, took it with me when I went to check out a 2005, bought the car, threw in my battery and drove to the house. No problem.