On 26 Apr 2006, wrote:

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:23:30 +0100, John Cartmell
wrote:

In article ,
Andy wrote:
His total markup is in the thousands of percent.

Unless you know that he purchased the item from the same source as
the pound shop you cannot make that assumption. Pound shops
generally do not provide the continuity of products that is
essential for trade. Comparing any other business with them is
unacceptable unless you also accept the possibility of your
retailers saying to you that the cells you require for essential
equipment can no longer be supplied - and you should have bought
them last week when they were dirt cheap.

The cheap batteries may be of poorer quality. I've bought
batteries from discount stores on occasions and have found a much
higher rate of dead ones.

I think they buy up stock with a short lifespan at a knock down
price too. If you buy a battery from a 'good' store it will have a
"use-by" date several years in the future. Batteries from discount
stores often have a date only a few months in the future.


What you say has a lot of logic to it but I have found that some of
the better cells on the £1 card to be quite good (some are crapped
out). I don't see much evidence of any "use by" date on these £1
cards although there may be something purely fictional stamped
somewhere.

They are usually alkaline button cells and not silver oxide so they
do not always power some types of equipment.

Silver oxide has a slightly higher nominal voltage and will keep its
voltage right to the very end, whereas the voltage of alkaline cells
decreases in a much more gradual way as the cell gets used up and
this may not suit some devices. The theoretical shelf life of both
types is usually very good and in the order of a year or two.

I run my digital thermometers off these cheapo cells. And also run
those poorly designed devices which need four buttons cells all
stacked together (eg my voice recording pen). If I didn't put cheapo
batteries in that sort of device then I would very quickly spend more
on full price batteries than the device is worth!

I have even put cheapo cell sinto a watch where the effort of opening
and replacing and closing the watch make it annoying if the cells
packs up in 3 months. But I have been pleasantly surprised - altho
my expectation was not set very high to start with! :-)