Since converting his entire inventory of wheelchair batteries to the gel type, repeat sales of those items have noticeably lost their spark at Larry Rice’s Houston-based The Wheelchair Shop. Rice nevertheless is thrilled. “Every replacement battery I don’t sell means there is an installed battery out in the field still working hard for the customer,” he says. “The revenue I am giving up by selling fewer replacement batteries is small. But it is nothing compared to what I gain from having a customer satisfied by the performance and quality of the battery they already have.”

What customers want in a battery is a product forever crackling with power, that never gives out, and that costs little to buy. Obviously, this battery does not exist. So Rice’s job is to steer them to the next best thing. “The most suitable battery for a wheelchair is the deep-cycle type, which can be charged, discharged, and recharged over and over again,” he says. “Gel batteries are better for this purpose than absorbed glass-mat batteries. Gel batteries are strong, long-lasting, and will provide a consistent, full-day’s run for approximately 360 discharge-recharge cycles. That means the customer will replace his battery no sooner than about once a year.

“These batteries rarely fail before they reach the end of the their life-cycle,” Rice continues. “We have a rate of return on warrantied batteries that is so low it seems unreal—we see maybe one a year. And our warranty period runs not for 90 days, but 12 months.”

Choose Wisely
Both gel and absorbed glass-mat batteries come in different performance classes. There are several factors that go into selecting the most appropriate one for any given wheelchair application. Among them are the combined weight of the chair and rider, the amount of energy draw from accessories (such as seat tilt-recline and elevation controls), and the amount of driving around in the chair during the course of a typical day.

A battery properly matched to the purpose should be capable of providing power to last at least 8 hours before needing a recharge, according to Rice. “There is an actual calculation to identify the right size of battery,” he says. “But after you have been at this for so many years, you can pretty accurately choose by letting your experience—and the manufacturers’ recommendations—guide you.”

Type U-1 is the smallest ampere/hour-rated battery Rice’s shop stocks for wheelchair use. Next up the ladder is the 22 NF. Most often sold is the beefier Group 24 battery. Highest ampere/hour-rated of the lot is the Group 27.

Choosing the correct size is important because a battery of too high a classification makes for needless extra expense, Rice indicates. “A U-1 battery carries a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of about $120,” he details. “The 22 NF is around $180. Group 24s are in the vicinity of $220. Group 27s, $250.”

On the other hand, while a battery in a less-than-optimal performance class can save money, choosing it will result in an underpowered chair—and a profoundly dissatisfied customer.

Tell Don’t Show
Meanwhile, Rice is of the opinion that batteries should not be displayed in a showroom, as might be done at the local retail automotive parts store. Concurring in that view is David Simmons, vice-president and owner of Majors Medical Supply, a Clemens, NC, HME specializing in mobility but also offering wound care, diabetic supplies, and assorted other home care products. “We have got a showroom with wheelchairs on display, and the batteries are loaded into the wheelchairs—but no batteries are merchandised by themselves for the simple reason that we do not want customers thinking of wheelchair batteries as a do-it-yourself item like car batteries,” says Simmons.

In Rice’s showroom, the preferred approach is to mount on the wall a poster-sized chart depicting the various batteries and listing their performance specs. “One of our battery vendors has also given us some brochures that discuss things like battery life cycle, proper charging techniques, routine maintenance, and ensuring safety,” says Rice.

On the subject of maintenance, end-users acquiring their first powered wheelchair often mistakenly assume they will be spending significant time performing tasks related to battery care. “The sealed gel battery is virtually maintenance free, other than the customer having to charge it back up after every so many hours of use,” says Rice.

However, even being told this, not every customer believes it. Take, for instance, the fellow whose battery needs led him to become a client of Simmons. “He just could not keep from tinkering with his battery,” Simmons recalls. “Even though it said on the outside that it was maintenance-free, he felt it just could not possibly be so. He kept opening the tops and adding water to it, like the old-fashioned lead-acid type. Every time he did that, he would ruin the battery.”

Addressing Concerns
Indeed, dealers and providers often find they must devote a certain amount of effort dispelling faulty notions about the batteries they provide. One such common misconception has to do with recharging. “Some customers do not quite grasp that they can’t recharge for appreciably less than the recommended amount of time,” says Simmons. “They will charge it up for an hour or two and, because the power level light is in the green, they will think they have enough charge to drive around.”

They then conclude the battery is defective because the incomplete charge did not take them very far, he adds. Reaching that conclusion, they then bring the battery back to the shop where service personnel must waste time trying to find the problem in a unit that has none (and, after determining as much, wasting more time trying to convince the complaining customer that everything checks out fine).

Charge Anytime
Rice offers a somewhat different take on that: “People worry that the gel battery is going to develop a memory—that is, if they recharge it when it is only half discharged, the battery will from then on think that it is fully recharged every time it gets up to that halfway point, and so the customer will be having to recharge more often. Well, that does not happen with gel batteries. It does with nickel-cadmium batteries, the kind they are more familiar with since those are used in many models of cordless phones and toys. But gel does not develop a memory. It charges all the way back up to 100%.

“So, we tell people to charge the battery whenever they want,” Rice continues. “The optimal time to recharge is when the battery indicator on the chair drops down to the yellow zone. But there are some people who want peace of mind and prefer to charge before it gets down that low. We tell them to go ahead because we know these batteries will accommodate that. And that’s why we like this battery so much—it allows customers to feel comfortable.”

At the opposite end, Simmons advises end users to never let the battery go completely dead since that tends to shorten its service life. “If they are not going to be using their chair for a long time, they should make sure its battery is periodically recharged, maybe once a week,” he says he tells them, given that batteries lose about 1% of their charge during a 24-hour period of nonuse.

Another misconception leads some wheelchair owners to hang onto a battery that has seen better days in order to put it to some other use. Large paperweight is not one of them. “Usually,” says Simmons, “as the battery nears the end of its life cycle, it becomes too weak to power their wheelchair even though it still holds a charge. So they try to use it in another application, such as a lighter-weight mobility device—a scooter, for instance. And that is OK, because the battery is basically serving the same purpose. Where it becomes a problem is when they try to use it for a different purpose, like in their lawn mower or truck where it won’t deliver the goods.”

Sage Advice
Most batteries at the end of their life are suitable only for disposal, says Rice. Old ones can’t, however, be simply tossed into the dumpster out back—doing so would run afoul of a slew of environmental safety regulations, each carrying fines and penalties serious enough to cripple or even destroy your business in the event authorities were to catch and convict you. Thus, disposal of spent batteries is a matter best handled by the manufacturers, who are only too happy to take them off your hands, says Rice. “We are occasionally approached by strangers who want to buy the old batteries from us so they can recycle the core materials,” he mentions. “Our answer is always no. Those batteries go only to the manufacturer because we know they have the policies and procedures to dispose of them in full accordance with environmental safety regulations.”

As to reimbursement, the amounts offered usually fall a notch or two below battery list price, which means a provider buying at wholesale can still make money on the sale—but just barely. “Each payor has different rates of reimbursement for batteries,” he reports. “We are waiting for the DMERCs to come out with new rates, but we are not expecting much in the way of improvement.”

The good news is that batteries—no matter how sufficiently or insufficiently they are reimbursed—always afford a great talking point in the course of delivering a wheelchair sales presentation. “Batteries give us an opportunity to emphasize to our payor sources and end users that we only use quality products throughout,” says Rice. “The battery is an important item for us. It helps us sell our chairs. But most important, it’s foundational to customer satisfaction. And customer satisfaction is the whole key to being successful in this business.”

Safety concerns prompt a switch from lead
The Wheelchair Shop in Houston stopped selling lead-acid batteries (the type used in golf carts and automobiles) years ago. “We felt those were too dangerous,” says the company’s Larry Rice. “First, there is the sulphuric acid content inside the battery. An end user handling the battery might splash himself with the acid and suffer injury. Worse, when a lead-acid battery charges, it emits hydrogen gas as a by-product, and hydrogen gas is explosive. Hydrogen gas also can build up inside the battery if the water level is not maintained. And these are electrical systems, so all it takes is a single spark and you have got a fireball.”

Lead-acid batteries also are subject to a process known as sulfaction, in which performance-sapping deposits build up on the plates inside the battery’s individual cells. Sulfaction hits poorly maintained batteries the hardest (those with water levels neglected to the point of dropping below the tops of the plates). The main effect of sulfaction is it prevents an otherwise perfectly good battery from holding its charge.

Rich Smith is a contributing writer for Dealer/Provider.