[jon@harrison.ne]

I think that different reports, some good and some bad, about Optimas may well be due to manufacturing problems in Mexico in the interval of Feb 2009 and going back a few (I don't know the exact number) of years. I'll bet if we did a survey of owners battery dates we would find excellent in the pre Mexico days (those made in Mexico should have a label saying so), poor for Mexico made up until Feb 09, and better (I don't know if they would be excellent) after Feb 09. The battery date would have to be the manufacture date (which should be identifiable from numbers on the battery) not when it was purchased. I believe my dealer when he says there was a period of bad units. In effect he is doing a survey. Hopefully more data will come in on the new batteries by the time I have to get one. Right now I am skeptical. This same sort of thing is happening to lots of products. Companies like Black and Decker, Millwaukie, Timken, and on and on used to have unquestioned quality. Then they offshored manufacturing to Mexico, China, or wherever and they have lost their luster. Sometimes the only thing that is similar to the previous products is the name and that slowly gets tarnished as we consumers catch on to the fraud.