Monday, October 11, 2010 Skil 92942 FlexCharge 3.6-Volt Stick Style 3 Hour Battery Charger Review

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(More customer reviews)In April I bought two replacement 92942 SKIL chargers for my cordless drill and screwdriver from Amazon and had not used them until yesterday.Last night I put two batteries in each of the 2 new chargers (plus 1 existing 92942 charger) and plugged them all in.About two hours later I smelled electrical burning and found that all the wall transformers for the chargers had melted.ALL THREE OF THEM!I received a nasty burn trying to remove the wall transformers from the AC outlet and had to resort to using oven mitts.I had had this happen last summer to two otheridentical chargers that I had had for five or six years.Same thing....melted transformer.I found posts on the internet that this was a common problem with this charger.But, I figured in several years of knowing this issue, Skill would have fixed the problem.Wrong!

Today I emailed both Amazon.com (who I purchased the chargers from last month) and Skil.Skil said the chargers melted due to bad batteries being placed into them.I asked how I would know if the batteries were bad before placing them in the charger."Just take them to our service center and have them checked" was the answer.OK, before I use my cordless screwdriver to hang a picture tonight, I need to take the batteries to their service center to make sure that they won't burn up the charger or the house?

So, I have to assume that the first hint that I'd have of a battery being defective would be the fact that my house would burn down!Fair assumption, right?

So the Skil Customer Service rep tells me that I should not leave the battery in the charger longer than the three hours it takes to fully charge them.I told her that the instructions state, in three seperate sentences on the same page, not to worry about overcharging the batteries and that it was OK to leave them charging unattended indefinately.Oh, and by the way, last nights melt-down of the two, identical new chargers occurred a full hour short of the recommended 3 hour charge.

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Product Description:
* Charger, for use with all Flexi-charge system products * Holds two 3.6 volt power packs (2611-8661)