Interesting because mine is crooked so that makes sense. Again basically no warranty today, "BUT," how many of us legitimately ever used the one that was nixed? In principle, it's sh*****, but practically speaking, should be fine. My sample size is way too small, but I've purchased 5 in my lifetime and none failed (they didn't pass a load test after 5 years or so, but still worked). Simply amazing how expensive the 24F is and how much % wise it increased. While the H6 and 94R have gone down in price.
I've been buying almost entirely 48/91, and now commonly known as H6, batteries for decades, and what was used primarily in Euro car applications (along with 94R/H7 for the larger vehicles) in the past has now become mainstream, along with the venerable 24/35/78s. Even H5s, which were common with the smaller displacement engine models that weren't imported to the US, can now be found at Costco.
I see the Interstate AGMs can now be from China, Germany or unmarked on country of origin...those are presumably USA.
I have not seen the "made in Korea" Interstate labels yet, as show in post #25 above, but have seen the "made in Korea" AGMs at Walmart and bought one almost a year ago for a friend, and it continues to work well.
I've recently made the rounds prepping to buy a replacement for an 8-year old Costco Interstate H6 (when they had a
42-month replacement warranty!), and it reinforced that "whatever is on the rack, from the supplier" is the prevailing practice. US, Mexico, China, Korea, Germany, Spain, unmarked…WYSIWYG at the time and place.
Interstate has switched in the past year to getting their H6s from Exide, so that's what's on the racks at Costco, and their own stores.
I might have been willing to take a chance on their current prorata warranty, if they were still JCI's, since I've found them to be robust, even hard to kill, going back a long way, but not so sure about an Exide.
But, most people buy whatever, and at whatever price, that will start their car again and not leave them stranded. Necessity comes first, not unlike replacing a broken water heater. While at the Interstate store, some dude rode in on a bicycle and needed a battery for his Civic. $210+core+tax please, and no qualms about that.
Which also triggered a though that, while fraud probably played a role in determining Costco's current warranty terms, it is conceivable that offering batteries at ~60% of the price, under the older comparable warranty terms, might not have entirely sat well with their supplier, no matter how many units Costco buys from them.
The dumbed down warranty just might have been a compromise to both combat fraud, as well as keep Interstate happy and not be as disruptive to a market that thrives on $200+ batteries, which have become commodities. Costco could certainly lean on their heft, like Walmart does in selling at cut rate prices, but chooses not to, and made a concession as tradeoff.
