Google Pixel 6a Battery Performance Program: Just Take The Money

Our Google Pixel 6a phones qualify for their “Battery Performance Program”, which involves severely limiting the battery charge and discharge levels to avoid “potential battery overheating”. After the mandatory capacity limit kicked in, I must now let the phone suck a socket by the middle of the afternoon so that it will survive until bedtime; if I had a more active lifestyle, it’d be flat dead by noon.

My options under the Program are thus:

• Have the battery replaced by the local iFixit shop, without a warranty covering “Whoops, broke your phone. Too bad, so sad.”
• Get a $100 check
• Get $150 off a new phone at The Google Store

Even though I do not have a deep emotional attachment to the 6a, the first option is obviously a bad deal. Somewhat against my better judgement, I opted to take the $150 discount on a shiny new Pixel 10a.

Redeeming the $150 from the Battery Program involves (their words + my bullets & emphasis):

• visit store.google.com,
• add the desired item(s) to the cart,
• then enter discount code during checkout for an instant $150 discount on your purchase.
• Promotional code is for one-time use only with no residual balance;
• can be combined with other offers

So I set up an order with the cart looking like this:

The alert reader will note the inability to enter the “discount code” associated with the Battery Program.

Two hours of chat-typing with Google Customer Support over the course of two days established the hard fact that “can be combined with other offers” does not apply in this case, because the $100 discount precludes any additional offers.

6:16:15 PM Ed Nisley: There is no way to add a second discount code.
6:16:59 PM Ed Nisley: So I cannot add the $150 battery code to the order
6:19:38 PM Ed Nisley: But quoting the email with the battery code: "can be combined with other offers"
6:20:01 PM Ed Nisley: How do I include the battery code in this order?
6:21:17 PM Stella:  Got it  , let me check with my resources.
6:22:47 PM Stella: I have checked the details with my team, and unfortunately, you cannot apply two promo codes at the same time. You may use only one code per order. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
6:24:57 PM Ed Nisley: So Google saying the battery code can be combined with the other offers is a lie?
6:26:46 PM Stella: I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.
6:27:08 PM Ed Nisley: It's not an inconvenience, it's $150 I'm not getting.
6:27:28 PM Ed Nisley: Despite having it be Google's fault in the first place for the bad batteries.
6:28:14 PM Stella: I understand your point. While the Pixel 6a promo code can be combined with ongoing store promotions, it cannot be used in conjunction with another promo code. Per our policy, two promo codes cannot be combined for a single order. I hope you understand.
6:28:47 PM Ed Nisley: This is contradictory: "can be combined with ongoing store promotions, it cannot be used in conjunction with another promo code"
6:29:09 PM Ed Nisley: If it can't be combined with another promo code, how can it be combined with ongoing store promotions?
6:29:47 PM Stella: I understand your point here.
6:29:53 PM Stella: I do understand that the provided resolution doesn't meet your expectations. But, please understand that I cannot go beyond the system restrictions.

Thus whittling the $150 battery discount down to $50, because I can have either $100 or $150, but not both.

There is obviously no recourse. I will definitely take the cash-in-hand $100 when we do this dance with Mary’s phone.

Google doesn’t care, because they’re bigger than the phone company ever was and they know it.