A candid look at the "I only buy brand new" objection, the two real failure stories behind our process, and what happens when a Bulldog rebuild ends up in your fleet.
Not long ago an EMS ops manager emailed Eric Ineman, who runs the Stryker rebuild program at Bulldog Battery, with one line:
"No. I only buy brand new equipment. That's the only thing I trust."
That email is the reason this article exists.
If you run an EMS fleet, you have probably had some version of that conversation in your own head. Stryker batteries are mission-critical. Crews are out the door at 2 a.m. on a bariatric call, and the cot has to lift. Anything that isn't OEM new feels, on the surface, like a risk you don't need to take.
That instinct is reasonable. Most ops managers we talk to share it. So we sat down with Eric to do something we have never done in print: walk through the exact way he handles that objection on a call, the two failure stories that shaped how we run the program, and the things he won't say to a prospect because they would plant a doubt the customer hadn't voiced.
The conversation is below, lightly edited for length. If you want the basics first, start with What Is Stryker Battery Recelling?
The First Sixty Seconds: How Eric Handles "I Only Buy New"
Q: An ops manager emails you and says they only trust brand-new Stryker. What do you say back?
Eric: The first thing I do is acknowledge what they're feeling instead of pushing past it. I understand the risk of trying something unfamiliar, especially if they have tried aftermarket batteries in the past and had bad luck.
Then I make sure they hear what we're offering. What we sell is not an aftermarket battery, a generic version, or a knockoff. It is the OEM battery, with the same circuitry, the same shell, the same product their crews are already using in the field. We replace the cells with a higher-capacity, higher-quality cell, run full QC on the pack, and back it 100%.
That framing matters because the apprehension most ops managers have was never about Bulldog. It comes from the bad rebuild they tried four years ago, or the aftermarket pack that swelled in their cot, or the supplier who disappeared mid-warranty. Those concerns are real. We address them by being specific about what we are and what we aren't.
The Move That Earns the Trial
Q: After that first response, what's the next thirty seconds of the call?
Eric: I let them know we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, with the return shipping on us. That is a risk-free way to give us a shot. I tell them I understand the risk they're taking by trying us, and that this isn't a decision that will come back to bite them in six months.
That last line matters. The ops manager who emailed me told me his supervisor, who is essentially the owner, had tried another rebuild service years ago and got burned. From that point forward, the owner only trusted OEM. The ops manager's job wasn't to evaluate Bulldog on the merits. It was to avoid a decision that would make him look bad if it went sideways.
So my job on the call is to make the trial path so safe that the ops manager can't lose. If the batteries don't perform, send them back on our prepaid label and we refund the order. They have had the packs in the field for a month before that decision is final. That removes the "come back to bite me" risk.
The Turn: When You Can Feel an Ops Manager Come Around
Q: What's the moment in a conversation where you can feel them start to come around?
Eric: Three things usually do it.
First, when I go into detail about the cells. Customers think a rebuild is one supplier with one option. We tried several cell manufacturers before we settled on the one we use now. We tested them, tracked defect rates, and picked the one with the lowest defect numbers and the most consistent supply chain. That is not something we stumbled into. It is a deliberate choice we have maintained for close to two decades.
Second, peer references. Just this week I was on a call with an ops manager from a town in the Midwest. It turned out we had an existing customer in the same town, in the same EMS circle. The two of them had met in person and were headed to the same EMS Week convention the following week. Once that ops manager knew his peer was already running Bulldog packs, the apprehension dropped off the call.
Third, the warranty. When I tell them we ship a same-day replacement on any pack that fails, UPS label included and no questions asked, they realize the worst-case scenario is a phone call to me, not a fleet outage. That changes the math.
The Numbers, Plainly
Q: An ops manager says "okay, prove it. Give me the numbers." What do you lead with?
Eric: Tenure and scale. We have been rebuilding Stryker batteries for more than a decade. Over 3,000 packs rebuilt. More than 150 EMS agencies across the continental US, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. Our shop rebuilds 50 to 75 packs a week across every battery type we service, and we see almost none of them come back.
The technical specs come after that. Our cells are 3.0 Ah nickel-metal hydride versus the OEM's 2.5 Ah nickel-cadmium, about 20% more capacity. NiMH also doesn't develop the memory effect the way NiCd does, so crews can charge mid-shift without shortening the pack's service life. Operationally that means fewer mid-shift battery swaps and longer overall pack life.
Our warranty claim rate sits under 2% across those 3,000+ rebuilds. One-year warranty, same as OEM new. Same-day shipment on any warranty replacement.
I lead with tenure and scale because the specs only matter once the ops manager believes the company is real and stable. The specs aren't the trust builder. The track record is.
For the full spec comparison and current pricing, see the Stryker battery rebuild page.
What Happens When a Pack Fails: Two Real Stories
This is the part most battery suppliers won't put in print. We're putting it in print because it is where trust gets built, or doesn't.
Story One: The Customer We Lost, and Won Back
Eric: Several years ago we rebuilt a batch of packs for an ambulance company. After about a year I noticed I hadn't heard back from them, so I reached out. They told me one of their EMTs had dropped a pack on a transport and the casing broke open. The cells inside, which are welded together with tabbing, came apart and caused a problem. They didn't trust the rebuild anymore and went back to OEM.
That call was uncomfortable to take. It was also useful information.
I brought it back to our rebuild team. We worked out what field conditions caused the casing to fail and engineered a response. Two changes came out of it. We now shrink-wrap every pack twice over, so if a casing ever takes impact damage the cells stay together inside. And we developed an adhesive with a local company, made specifically for the material Stryker casings are molded from, that prevents the kind of break that customer experienced.
I went back to him with the changes and walked him through what we had updated and why. He decided to give us another shot, and he has placed several repeat orders since. He told me he was impressed that I followed up at all, and impressed that the response wasn't a discount or an excuse. It was an engineering change.
That is the only kind of warranty story worth telling. The fix is permanent, the customer is back, and the rebuild bench is better for it.
Story Two: When UPS Damages a Pack in Transit
Eric: A different kind of failure. We ship packs nationwide on UPS Ground. Most shipments arrive clean. Occasionally a box gets mangled in transit and the customer opens it to find a pack that has been bounced around.
One agency called and described exactly that. The box was beat up, some packs were exposed, and they weren't sure the units inside were still safe to deploy. We shipped replacement packs the same day, without waiting to confirm whether the damage had affected anything, and included a UPS label so the originals could come back for inspection on the bench.
Bulldog absorbed the cost. The customer kept their cots in service. When the originals came back we tested them and wrote new packing standards from what we found: more cushioning, better corner protection. The customer was happy, and we made the operational change.
The pattern is the same as story one. A real problem surfaces. We respond before the customer has to push. The fix gets engineered into the standard process. Every failure mode we have encountered has produced a permanent process change, not a one-off replacement.
What Changes After You Switch
Q: When does an ops manager go from "I'm trying this" to "I'm a Bulldog customer"?
Eric: Inside the first month or two. With every new customer I do a follow-up call or email a few weeks after their first batch has been deployed. The response is almost always the same: the batteries are working great, better than what they were used to, and the crews are happy.
The line I get from repeat customers is some version of "Send me more." Not a long explanation or a glowing testimonial, just the order. That is the moment the apprehension is gone, and from there they're on a regular reorder cycle.
What changes for them is their relationship to the batteries. They stop thinking about Stryker packs as a recurring stress point. The packs work, they last longer than what they replaced, and when something does come up the answer is a same-day shipment instead of a three-week OEM backorder.
It becomes one less thing they have to worry about.
The Internal Sell: What Happens When the Chief Asks Questions
Q: When an ops manager pushes the decision up the chain, to a chief or to finance, what do those people ask?
Eric: Identity questions, not technical questions.
The chief or supervisor wants to know who Bulldog is, how long we have been around, how long we have offered this service specifically, and who else is using it. They're not interrogating the spec sheet. They're asking whether their ops manager has found a real company or a fly-by-night.
That is why tenure and scale are the lead numbers, not capacity or warranty rate. The internal sell is a credibility check, not a technical evaluation. The ops manager defending this decision to the boss needs to be able to say: "36 years in business, more than a decade running this exact program, 150+ EMS agencies on it right now." That is the sentence that protects them upstairs.
For the long version of that answer, read why 150+ EMS agencies have switched to rebuilt Stryker batteries.
One Last Thing Eric Wanted Ops Managers to Know
Eric: When a customer orders from us, they're dealing with me. I'm the person who answers the phone and the person who handles the warranty call. They're not entered into an automated system, they're not in a queue, and they're not bounced between reps. My number is on every order they place. If something goes wrong, they call the same person they bought from, every time.
That is the part the spec sheet doesn't capture, and it is the part that makes the warranty real.
If You're On the Fence
The trial path is the one Eric described. Two packs, a 30-day money-back guarantee, and free shipping both ways. If they don't perform the way you expect, ship them back on our label and we refund the order. That is 30 days of live field testing with no commitment.
If you would rather talk it through first, Eric is direct. You can also watch his full interview on the rebuild program.
Email Eric: eric@bulldogbattery.com
Direct line: 607-600-3001
Run your fleet's numbers: Stryker Battery Savings Calculator
