Battery date
 

Mrs Fox had new batteries installed yesterday - in her cart, that is - and they are stamped D8 which, according to the Trojan website, means they were finished in April 2018.

Not bad, for batteries installed in March 2018.

Any idea what's going on here?

Does Trojan have a “contact us” icon?

From their website

How do you read the date codes on the batteries?
Negative Terminal- Shipping Date. This code indicates the month and year when the battery was shipped out of our factory. LETTER stands for the month, A to L (A=January, B=February, C=March, and so on); NUMBER is the last digit of the year.

Example:

A battery with “G4” on the negative.
“G4” means that it was shipped from our factory around July of 2014.

Around is not the same as exactly. Wiggle room

Very odd, though, that they would have the "April 2018" stamp in use before April even comes around.

I don't call that "wiggle room" - I call that blatant lying.

Why don’t you call them rather than making these wild accusations?

I hardly think that having batteries installed in March that claim to have been delivered in April constitutes "wild accusations".

Trojan has a different letter for each month of the year, "D" being April. If the batteries left the factory in March they should be stamped "C", not "D".

Since they are clearly and unequivocally post-dating them, one has to wonder why.

I have e-mailed Trojan for an explanation and will let you know here what their reply is.

"I call that blatant lying."

I'm sorry, but I do not understand your logic, Bogie Shooter.

The above quote is certainly an accusation - that any company claiming to have delivered batteries in April, when I have them in my cart a month earlier, is lying - but why do you consider that accusation to be wild when the facts speak for themselves?

As Blueash astutely points out, it gives them wiggle room. The question is "from what are they trying to wiggle?"

Anyway, I'm sure Trojan will have a perfectly valid explanation for not wanting to use their March stamp on March batteries, and any suggestion that they are trying to hoodwink their customers into thinking that the batteries are newer than they really are will be safely put to rest.

Like I said Trojan has the right answer.

Big deal, so you get a free extra month on the warranty.

If it is the battery in my defib implant I am concerned. In my golf cart, if I am prioritizing, I guess I would put it somewhere between gas stations still using the 9/10 of a cent on their price per gallon and Pluto losing its status as a planet.

I would certainly put that one ahead of the batteries :-)

Question:
I had six new T105s installed in my golf cart yesterday - March 20, 2018 When I checked the date code on each battery it was D8. How can you claim that a battery was shipped in April 2018 when I have it installed a month earlier?

Response from Trojan:
The finishing date code “D8” represents this battery had its last inspection and left the plant in Feb. 2018. This will correlate with the assembly date code laser etched into the cover, located in the center of cover near fill holes. I will see about getting that changed in our documentation on “How to read the date codes”.

It's probably just a case where the stamp the batteries with the date that they expect them to leave the factory. I'm sure that they don't have someone stamping the batteries as they are loaded onto a truck. They probably sold a few more batteries than they expected in March so a few April batteries got shipped a week or two earlier.

I don't see it as a big deal and as has been pointed out, unless the warranty starts on the purchase date you'll get an extra month on the warranty.

I don't know what you're suspicious about. What would the company have to gaon by stamping a battery with a date that a week or two early.

Every thing fails the day after the warranty expires.