Belkin Power Banks Do Not Deliver Promised Power Class Action

Belkin International, Inc. sells chargers as accessories for portable electronic devices (PEDs). However, the complaint for this class action alleges that the chargers, or power banks, as they are also called, are misleadingly labeled, claiming to have a larger capacity than they actually do. The complaint alleges, “The consumers [who] buy those power banks are harmed by receiving products inferior to what they believe they are buying.”

Two classes have been proposed for this action:

• The Illinois Class is all consumers who bought the products in the state of Illinois.
• The Multistate Class is all consumers who bought the products in Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Consumers these days rely on PEDs that run on battery power. Power banks offer a way to charge PEDs when the user is moving around or away from power outlets. Their ability to charge a device is normally expressed in milliampere-hours, or mAh. Those with higher ratings are supposed to be able to deliver more power or a greater charge.

Belkin makes various lines of power banks, including its Boost Charge, Pocket Power, Power Pack, and Power RockStar lines. The complaint alleges that all of these deliver less power than the “battery capacity” advertised on their packaging.

For example, plaintiff Dennis Gromov bought a Pocket Power 10000. Page 8 of the complaint shows an image of the product’s packaging, identifying the item as a “Pocket Power 10K” along with the rating “10000 mAh.” But the complaint alleges that “the Pocket Power 10000 cannot, and never could, deliver 10,000 mAh.”

The complaint explains that the device consists of one or more battery cells and a circuit board. “Running the internal circuit board and converting power for charging PEDs is a process that uses a substantial amount of the internal cells’ power[,]’ the complaint alleges. “This conversion and distribution necessarily reduces the amount of available mAh. Thus a power bank represented as delivering ‘X’ mAh will necessarily deliver less than ‘X’ because the circuit board consumes a substantial proportion of the battery cells’ mAh capacity…”

In conjunction with this case, the complaint alleges that other Belkin power banks were tested by a laboratory. The two 10000 mAh ones delivered only 6464 and 6855 mAh, the complaint claims, while the two 6600 mAh ones delivered only 4453 and 4206 mAh and the two 5000 ones delivered only 3254 and 3504 mAh.

The complaint alleges, “These independent lab results confirm that the Products consistently fail to provide power equal, or substantially close, to the amount of mAh that Belkin claims, and which ordinary consumers rely upon and reasonably expect.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Deceptive Advertising, Deceptive Labels, Does Not Provide the Power Advertised, Misrepresentation of Production or Capacity