Firestone Won't Replace Marginal Car Battery

About 1.5 yrs ago, Firestone installed a new 5yr battery in my Acura
Integra which I drive infrequently. In the past few months, the
vehicle failed to start several times due to a dead battery.
Yesterday, Firestone checked the battery but would not exchange
because supposedly it was OK. I was suspicious since they had the
battery connected to either a diagnostic meter or a charger for a
total of 4 hours. At one point, I asked why the battery was still
being charged and the Service Advisor said it (presumably the battery)
hadn't reached the right temperature yet. After 5 hrs of waiting, the
Advisor said the battery was OK, charging system was OK, and the
battery was probably dieing because my vehicle's electrical system was
faulty and drawing too much current when turned off. I asked if he had
measured the draw current with the vehicle off. The Advisor said it
was drawing 1.8 Amps. I told him that 1.8 Amps was rather high and
asked if he actually measured it with a meter. He said it was too low
for their diagnostic equipment. I asked the Advisor to note the 1.8
Amps draw current on the Customer Invoice, so that I or another
technician could verify it, but he refused and after arguing for a
while he advised "it is a free country and I was free to go
elsewhere".

Upon reaching home, I personally measured the current draw using an
Hewlett Packard 34401A, High Precision, Laboratory Grade, Digital
Multimeter. With the car off, the voltage across the battery was
12.635 V, and with the meter connected in series with the battery's
positive terminal, the current draw was initially 195 which ramped
down to 188 mA. After a few minutes, the current draw dropped to a
steady 21 mA. Is this acceptable?

 

sounds good to me. radio and ECU memory is going to cause a slight draw
similar to that. sounds to me like they owe you a new battery... id go to a
different firestone.

 

A rough calculation indicates that ~20mA drawn from a 50 AH
battery will discharge it in ~100 days if not used/charged.

So how infrequent is your 'infrequent' use?

 

A rough calculation indicates that ~20mA drawn from a 50 AH

I have a Interstate MT25, 690 Cranking Amps, 550 Cold Cranking Amps. I
couldn't find the actual AmpHour rating at their website.

Sometimes three short trips a week. Mostly once every two weeks.
Sometimes as long as a month. Since my last post, I had the battery
retested at AutoZone. Their tech said a typical battery measures
between 11.2 and 10.8V during the load test on his equipment and that
mine dropped to 10.5V which is the minimum acceptable voltage. He said
this may be an indicator of a deteriorating cell within the battery.
This would correlate with the observation that the starter and
electric windows operate slower lately compared to when the battery
was first installed.

Does anyone know the specifics about the load test? Does it use a
standard resistance load? Does it use a standard current load? Is
10.5V really the minimum during the load test?

 

that reminds me of the tire(firstone) they told me over the phone that
with my mileage on the car the tire would probably cost me about $25..
they had a bad band inside the tire.. take if off the rim and you could
see the bad band... went there and was told they would have to check it
out and put the guage on the thread then go to the computer and see what
it says???? well 10 minutes later they tell me its $96 plus tax.. i ask
about balancing and all.. they tell tell me that is not included?????
i take the tire and throw it into the trunk and go some place else and
pay $69 for a new tire and dont worry about the warranty.. what good is
that warranty anyway they just jack up the price of the tire you need
and then prorate the cost to you.. or if you dont have a bad tire you
get the new one for the same price????