Hi everybody… I never post, however, this is a situation that is really serious and rings eerily similar to the Samsung Note-7 battery fire situation. I have a Sony Vaio Flip model SVF15NB1GL that I bought new in Dec of 2013. It has worked well for the past few years only being lightly used. On Sunday of this past week, the HDD completely died – no sound, no warning. So, I had to pull the drive to replace it (BTW, this drive is uber expensive and hard to find *and* not under warranty). When I opened the laptop up to replace the drive (yes, I am a hardware engineer), I found that the battery, although in good shape, was about ready to pop/explode and had BALLOONED with some kind of gas! (see the picture below)
I went online to see if there had been reports of this situation and there were. So I called Sony Customer Support from one of the many articles I found on Sony Vaio Flip battery fires and recalls, to ask them if they would be willing to provide me with a new battery in exchange for this dangerous one. As you can see below, this one is dangerously close to exploding and catching fire. The Sony Customer Support person on the phone looked up my machine (SVF15NB1GL) and said it does not qualify for the battery recall for the exact same issue that the SVF11N13CXS was recalled for! Amazing! There are many, many articles on the other Vaio Flip laptops and a wide spread recall.
Aside from a costly drive failure, I am shocked that Sony is choosing to disregard the fact that they have similar dangerous, potentially explosive batteries in their other Flip laptop, one of which I own!
If you have a Sony Vaio Flip model SVF15NB1GL, I suggest you check the battery to avoid possible harm to you or a property fire!
