Casio EX-Z75 Faulty Battery
I purchased a Casio EX-Z75 digital camera about a year ago and for the most part it’s been working perfectly and it’s a very good camera. However, I didn’t use it for about 2 months or so and it seems the rechargeable lithium ion battery is dead (it’s a NP-20 battery). When I try to recharge it, the red light on the charger just keeps blinking. After 2 sessions of charging for several hours, I gave up. I searched online and found out a lot of people also had this problem with this camera’s battery.
Call Casio for a Replacement Battery
Well, all you need to do is call up Casio customer service at 1-800-435-7732, explain the situation to them, and they’ll send out a new battery free of charge. They’ll ask you for information like your name and address, the model of the camera, where you bought the camera, and the serial number (it’s on the box and on the bottom of the camera). I think the most important thing is the serial no. because that’s the only way they can verify you own this model camera. They can’t exactly just give anyone who calls a free battery.
Common Issue With Rechargeable Lithium Ion Batteries
They’re aware that this is a common issue. Apparently lithium ion batteries naturally lose their charge when not in use. So if you’re not using the camera for an extended period of time, you’ll need to take out the battery once in a while and recharge it. I didn’t think the battery would just die out like this and be completely unusable. My laptop battery is the same - it completely loses its charge when I don’t use it for a while but I’m always able to recharge it. The battery doesn’t just die out like the camera battery.
Great Customer Service from Casio
Casio’s customer service is US-based and very friendly. Hold time was extremely short too. A recording said that estimated hold time was 48 seconds and I was immediately connected. At first I was expecting it to say 48 minutes! I was pleasantly surprised when it said “seconds” instead. I also got the new battery very fast - I called on Monday and got the battery today. They said it would take 2-3 days to process and ship out so it’s nice to get it earlier than expected. Casio shipped it UPS 2nd Day Air which is also very considerate of them (it came from NJ though so that’s probably why it was so fast). All in all, a very painless and pleasant experience with Casio customer service. Although it would be even better if they used batteries that don’t have this issue.
They sent the exact same battery so I hope I don’t run into this issue again. I guess the lesson is if you’re not using the camera, at least take out the battery and recharge it every few weeks.
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3 Comments
Thanks for this advise.
I have a NP-20 battery, it is not charging up. The charger’s red light blinks.
Called Casio 1-800-435-7732, and they said it is a known problem of its lithium batteries.
They are very nice, took some info and immediately offered to send a new battery to me free of charge.
Although Casio Customer Support been nice and offered to send a new battery ……. seems like this is a KNOWN problem to them, and as per this forum and many other forums claimed ……. WHY don’t Casio just issue a RECALL to its NP-20 lithium batteries???
OK … i get it ….. if u call…. u get your replacement for FREE ….. if u don’t …….. CASIO will save - let say $3 cost per battery …… CASIO probably sold millions of this each year ……. if 50% of their customer DID NOT call …… CAsio will save $1.5 million plus each year ……..
IS IT A GOOD BUSINESS Ethic??????
Yea I also have a NP-20 battery (actually I’ve updated the post with that info now).
I think it just comes down to a matter of cost. It’s reasonable to believe they purchased or manufactured these batteries in HUGE bulk quantities. In the aggregate, it probably costs them less to just send out new batteries when customers have problems than to simply get rid of the whole batch and purchase or make new batteries.
It’s unfortunate for consumers but I guess the best solution is that if you don’t use the camera for extended periods of time, to just take out the battery and charge it so it doesn’t go completely dead. Or if it does go dead, call Casio for another one. Yes it’s kind of a hassle and only Casio is to blame.
I purchased my for my daughter the casio EX-Z77 last year DEC. 14, 2008 the battery was doing the exact thing your talking about here. Blinking and not charging. I called casio five minutes ago 09-15-08 using the 800 # listed here. I got through in seconds, they took my info down and a new battery is in the mail. Thanks for the tip.