David -- yes, I'm referring to regular blister-packed Energizer brand lithiums.
I've bought them both locally from Walgreen's on sale, and from one of the reliable suppliers who advertises at CPF when they had an unusually good sale price, more than a year ago now. Some of them were dead or died in an hour or so of use in 2-cell LED lights, that I use for walking home from work after dark. I've just gotten the lights out again for this coming winter, so I'll be using them up again starting now
Expire dates on the ones I still have unopened are 2019 and 2020; I'd have opened anything with an earlier date first, but I think all were about the same.
As I said, I didn't worry about it, I think I mentioned it in an earlier thread here when I noticed the problem. Materials are shoddy, even if manufactured by honest people, and there's just a lot of crap in the industrial pipeline of all sorts.
Ask your auto mechanic, or anyone else who buys a lot of stuff, how much of what they get turns out to be bad. It's all over.
A few months ago I bought handheld loppers for cutting brush; after about ten hours' use, they fell apart -- turned out the main 5/16" bold holding the blades together, which was nicely plated and had the marks on the head indicating it was properly hardened for the use, had sheared. It was made out of some pot metal alloy, utter crap. Look up "counterfeit bolt" on Google Scholar if you want real worries.
Hell, I just looked up "counterfeit batteries" in Google Scholar, it's a big problem too.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=counterfeit+batteries&btnG=Search
-----This is why I always ask people selling something, where did they get it, where was it made.
