Hi!

Yesterday I went to the tool store for a replacement battery pack
for my KC14C Black & Decker cordless drill, as the previously
repaired shorted cells had burned out the charger

I could tell you about a lightly used Dustbuster that spent most of its life
on the charger. This in turn caused the batteries to burn up after a
relatively short service lifetime--maybe only two years, if that many.

I found out that--just as you say--the replacement parts are astronomically
priced whether purchased from B&D or elsewhere. I didn't have any sub-C
cells in the junkbox, and bigger ones didn't seem to work as a replacement.
They wouldn't fit.

So there you go Black & Decker - if you weren't such greedy *******s
you would have made some money out of me, but instead you tried to
rip me off - so I fixed it myself

It's not only that--it's also rather unkind to the environment to toss an
otherwise working piece of equipment and buy a new one only to have the same
thing happen. But I guess they don't really care and have slim profit
margins on each tool, so they don't really care.

I ended up saving the interesting parts from the unit, and tossing the rest.

William