Q: 3 year old MacBook with extremely swollen/bloated battery

You can get a new battery fairly cheap on eBay. As for buying OEM batteries rather than Apple batteries it's only Apple batteries that have had the bloating problem.

Black Batteries http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=macbook+black+battery&_sacat=0&LH_BIN=1&_sop=12 &_dmpt=Laptop_Batteries&_odkw=macbook+white+battery&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m 270.l1313

White Batteries http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=macbook+white+battery&_sacat=0&LH_BIN=1&_sop=12 &_dmpt=Laptop_Batteries&_odkw=macbook+black+battery&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m 270.l1313

Or for $129 from Apple http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA566LL/A?mco=MTY3ODQ5OTY

Brian Yu wrote:

 

As the title states, my 2007 MacBook has an extremely swollen/bloated battery. It's so big now that the trackpad no longer "clicks" when pressed and the cover on the battery no longer stays flush with the bottom. I took my computer to the Apple Store a couple of months ago but the Genius that helped me merely told me to buy a new battery. Now, it's larger than it was before and I'm getting suspicious that I have a defective battery. As far as performance and stats of the battery, I can still squeeze out 2-3 hours from it. It has 590 charge cycles and the condition is still Normal. Should I bother taking it in to the Apple Store again (It's quite a drive for me) or should I just pay up and buy a new battery?

Brian, I had exactly the same issue. The only difference is my Macbook is a late 08 model.

I pitched up at the genius bar and the guy said I would have to pay for a new battery, but in fact when he processed the exchange on the Apple system it said the new battery was free-of-charge as there was a current replacement problem for this issue.

Get down to the genius bar if you can.

This JUST happened to me. I have a 2007 Macbook (white) and my battery began to bulge. It messed up the trackpad, my computer was freaking out every time I touched it, etc.

I don't have applecare and my computer was no longer under warranty.

I went to the Mac Store and the genius told me I would have to buy a new one ($99, $120 for older model laptops). If I didn't want to do this, I could take the battery out and leave the computer plugged in.

I went back today and was helped by another man. He was amazing. He ran a computer diagnostic (ask for them to do this) that checked out literally every component of the computer. My battery checked out fine although he could see it was swolllen (my battery was totally fine in every other respect, held a charge for a day...). He told me that unfortunately nothing stood out as something which would make Apple cover the cost. However, when genuises run the diagnostic, the information (all of it) is immediately sent to Apple headquarters, which runs their own secondary scan just to make sure. Now, this won't happen for everybody, but when I went to pay, he was surprised and then was like "Wow! So good news! It's free!" It turns out that when Apple headquarters ran the results, my battery wasn't up to snuff in their eyes.So it really depends on the computer and the genius helping.