Slice battery craziness-What part number IS it???

Question

Last September we purchased 5 slice batteries for our X230 systems.  One of them went bad about a month and a half ago, and I opened a warranty replacement ticket with Lenovo but they can't find a replacement battery to ship me (it's been out of stock for about 6 weeks now).  They shipped out an incorrect battery at first, and I am getting the run around with various warranty, tech support, shipping, and status departments (I've been transfered to them all, have to explain my situation over and over again, only to get more confusion each time).
The battery I have has TWO part numbers printed on it, but they can't seem to ever cross reference these part numbers with the battery.  The place we ordered these batteries from (CDW) have a Manufacturing Part number which is a completely different part number and which is NOT printed on the battery itself anywhere.  Then, I just got off the phone with another person at Lenovo who gave me a slightly different part number, and then another part number (5 so far).  How can there be so many different part numbers for the same battery and how can Lenovo not be able to cross reference them?
On the battery itself, I have two part numbers (again, why two???)
FRU P/N:  42T4967
ASM P/N:  42T4904
Then, there is a manufacturer part number (not listed on the battery anywhere) 0A36280
Then there is a fourth part number they gave me which is 42T4903
Then they gave me another part number of 45N1035
How can this be so complicated and why so many part numbers?

Answer 1

jbobst,
Given the time elapsed since purchase, this would generally need to be addressed through service.  Service will deal exclusively with FRU or field replacement units.
During product life, we may introduce newer versions of a component or we may have an alternate supplier which can have a different FRU number but be functionally interchangable.   When newer parts are released, generally the older FRU subs to the newer one so if you order the older number on a product, if we are out of stock on that, the newer one can be sent instead.  Forward substitution.
I'll agree that this can be confusing and we try to make this seamless for the customer as much as possible.
Let me look into this overnight and see what we can do to locate stock.   I'll work with bgriffin on what we can do to accelerate this for you.
Best regards,
Mark
ThinkPads: S30, T43, X60t, X1, W700ds, IdeaPad Y710, IdeaCentre: A300, IdeaPad K1
Mark Hopkins
Program Manager, Lenovo Social Media (Services)
twitter @lenovoforums
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