Can't say I'm surprised by the Dell battery recall. 

I've had two Dells overheat.  Over the course of about a year, I had a Latitude overheat to the point that I could feel the heat through a stack of rolled up Wall Street Journals and it began to discolor the underside of my wrists.  Then, I bought an X1 which essentially fried its harddrive. 

To its credit, between the two computers, Dell replaced a fan, a motherboard, an entire laptop, and a hard drive. 

To its discredit, customer service was a nightmare.  Having paid for "gold" tech support didn't preclude:

-         being placed on interminable hold (more than 30 minutes in some cases);

-         dealing with a “voice recognition” system that could not “hear” me using any tone except shouting;

-         technicians who didn't know the products (i.e., couldn’t agree among themselves whether the X1 has a fan or is passively cooled);

-         leaving customers in the lurch (although replacement parts are sent express for “gold” contract holders, there’s no loaner or other option when the part is out of stock);

-         the assumption that customers who had bought laptops with operating systems and software pre-installed would manage to install those items on their own when Dell replaces the hard drive or computer; and

-         foreign techs with unintelligible accents (as someone spending the year with foreign nationals, I feel particularly qualified to say that these techs could not be understood).