Why the return reason changes the rules
Start with size. A typical e-bike pack is somewhere between 400 and 800 watt-hours. The small-battery relaxation that lets a phone or a cordless drill travel with light requirements stops at 100 Wh per battery, so an e-bike battery is fully regulated Class 9 dangerous goods even when it is in perfect condition — UN3481 while it is on the bike, UN3480 when it is returned on its own. That much is true of every e-bike return and is covered in the lithium battery shipping guide.
Damage changes the classification again. The ADG Code, in line with the UN Model Regulations it is built on, carves out lithium cells and batteries that are damaged or defective — physically deformed, swollen, punctured, leaking, identified by the manufacturer as defective for safety reasons, or involved in an incident — and assigns them their own special provision and their own packing instructions. A sound battery travels under a packing instruction designed to prevent short circuit and movement. A damaged one travels under a packing instruction designed to contain a fire. Those are different boxes, different cushioning, different marking, and a different conversation with the carrier.
And it is forbidden by air. The IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations prohibit damaged or defective lithium batteries from air transport altogether. This is not an approval process or a paperwork step; it is a prohibition. An interstate express return that quietly routes through an air linehaul is the way this rule gets broken without anyone intending to break it.
Batteries subject to a recall sit in the same family. A manufacturer recall for a safety defect generally brings the battery within the damaged-or-defective provisions whether or not the individual unit is showing symptoms, because the defect has been identified at type level.
"It's puffed up", "it got really hot", "it won't charge and it smells" are not free-text notes for the ticket. Each one is a description of a damaged or defective battery, and the moment you have read it, issuing an ordinary Class 9 label is a decision, not an oversight.
Recognising a damaged battery from a returns form
You will never see the battery before you have to decide what to do with it. The only inputs you have are the customer's words and, if you ask for them, the customer's photos. So the returns form has to ask the right questions, and the answers have to be treated as routing inputs rather than context.
The indicators below are the ones that matter. Any one of them takes the return out of the standard path.
| What the customer reports | What it usually means | Return path |
|---|---|---|
| Casing is swollen, bulging or split | Cell gassing — internal fault, thermal-runaway risk | No transport without specialist handling; usually no-transport |
| Got hot on the charger or while riding; smell; discolouration | Thermal event has started or been arrested | As above — treat as damaged/defective |
| Dropped, crashed, run over, water ingress | Mechanical or moisture damage; condition unknown | Damaged/defective provisions apply; photos before any decision |
| Won't charge, BMS error, cuts out under load | Electrical fault — may be sound, may not | Ask the condition questions; sound units may return as ordinary Class 9 by road |
| Covered by a manufacturer recall | Defect identified at type level | Follow the recall's own logistics; do not improvise a return |
| Change of mind, wrong model, unused | Sound battery | Ordinary fully-regulated Class 9 return, road, DG-capable carrier |
Two things are worth building into the form. First, ask the condition questions explicitly and separately — swelling, heat, smell, leakage, impact, water — rather than offering a single "faulty" reason. Second, require photos for every battery return and actually look at them before approving anything. A swollen pack is usually obvious in a photograph; a customer's description of it often is not.
What you cannot do with it
Most of the trouble in this area comes from doing the normal thing. The normal thing is to approve the return, generate a prepaid label and let the customer drop the parcel off. Every step of that is wrong for a damaged battery.
**Issue a parcel label.** Australia Post does not accept damaged or defective lithium batteries, and its tolerance for sound lithium is largely limited to small batteries in equipment. A prepaid parcel label puts a thermal-runaway risk into a network that has not agreed to carry it.
**Use any air service.** Forbidden under IATA for damaged or defective batteries, full stop. Interstate express products frequently use air linehaul without saying so on the label.
**Book it on your ordinary DG account.** Carrier acceptance for dangerous goods is per account, per class and often per lane, and acceptance of sound lithium does not extend to damaged units. A freight carrier who takes your UN3481 e-bikes every week will still refuse a swollen pack unless your account is specifically approved for the damaged-and-defective packing instruction — and many do not offer it at all.
**Ask the customer to "just post it back and we'll take a look".** If you engage the carrier — and a prepaid label means you have — the consignor obligations are yours. If the customer lodges it under their own name, you have shifted a regulated movement onto an untrained member of the public who is now the consignor of misdeclared dangerous goods. Neither is a position you want.
**Treat it as waste and assume the rules relax.** They do not. A battery being moved for disposal or recycling is still dangerous goods in transport, with its own provisions, and a damaged one still cannot fly.
Everything downstream — the depot, the driver, the linehaul, the receiving bench — inherits whatever the returns flow decided at the moment it generated a label. If the flow can issue a label for a swollen battery, it eventually will.
The three lawful outcomes
Once a battery is flagged as damaged or defective, there are exactly three places the return can go. Choosing between them is a commercial decision informed by the value of the unit and the cost of moving it, and it should be made deliberately and recorded.
For most consumer e-bike batteries this is the right answer. A compliant damaged-battery movement needs specialist packaging, a carrier approved for it and a road-only route, and the cost of that routinely exceeds the replacement value of the pack. The customer is refunded or sent a replacement, the failed unit is disposed of locally, and the decision, the photos and the disposal instruction are recorded against the return. Local disposal is easier than most merchants expect: many council transfer stations — the local tip — accept household lithium batteries in small quantities free of charge, and many councils run hazardous-waste collection days. Acceptance of a full e-bike pack, and of a visibly damaged one, varies by council, so the instruction to the customer should be "ring the transfer station first and tell them it is a damaged e-bike battery", not simply "take it to the tip". This is a legitimate outcome under consumer law, not a shortcut.
Where the unit has to come back — a high-value pack, a supplier who requires physical inspection for a warranty credit, a fleet or B2B customer — it can travel by road under the specific packing instruction for damaged or defective lithium batteries, with a DG freight carrier whose account is approved for it. You arrange the packaging (typically supplied to the customer or handled by a collection service), you book the carrier, you prepare the transport document. The customer packs nothing themselves.
For units showing active signs of thermal damage — heat, smell, venting — even the damaged-and-defective packing instruction may not be enough, and the battery should go to a specialist hazardous-waste collector or battery recycler with the equipment for it. You or the recycler arrange the pickup; the customer's job is to keep the battery somewhere safe until it happens.
The wrong fourth outcome — the one most flows default to — is "customer ships it, we sort it out when it arrives". That is not an option for a damaged battery; it is a failure to choose one of the three.
What you still owe the customer
None of this reduces the customer's rights. Under the Australian Consumer Law, a battery that has swollen or overheated within a reasonable lifespan is very likely a major failure, and for a major failure the consumer chooses the remedy — refund or replacement. The fact that the battery is difficult or expensive to transport is your problem, not theirs, and it is not a ground for delaying or refusing a remedy.
What you can reasonably ask for is evidence. Photographs of the unit, the serial number, the purchase record, and answers to condition questions are all reasonable requests, and they are also exactly what you need for the supplier warranty claim that should follow. What you cannot reasonably do is make the remedy conditional on the customer shipping a hazardous item you would not lawfully ship yourself.
The practical shape of a good resolution is usually: approve the remedy on the evidence, tell the customer how to keep the battery safe in the meantime, give them a clear disposal instruction or arrange a collection, and pursue the supplier for the cost with the same photos and serial. The warranty management guide covers the supplier-recovery side; the point here is that the transport constraint and the consumer remedy are separate questions, and conflating them is how merchants end up in disputes they cannot win.
Photos, serial, the customer's condition answers, the decision not to transport, and the disposal instruction should all live on one record. That record is your consumer-law position, your supplier-claim pack and your dangerous-goods audit trail at once.
What to tell the customer in the meantime
There is usually a gap of days between the customer reporting the problem and the battery being collected or disposed of. What you say in that window matters, and it should be a template, not improvised by whoever answers the ticket. Keep it to what fire services and battery manufacturers consistently advise, and point the customer to their state fire service's guidance rather than writing your own safety manual.
Stop using and stop charging the battery immediately; do not attempt to charge it "to see if it recovers"
Remove it from the bike if that can be done without force, and keep it out of the house — a garage floor, a concrete or paved area away from anything flammable and away from exits
Do not put it in a household bin, a general recycling bin or an unattended battery drop-off bin at a supermarket or hardware store — those are for small household batteries, and a damaged e-bike pack should not be in any of them
A staffed council transfer station is different: most accept lithium batteries in small quantities free of charge. Call ahead, say it is a damaged e-bike battery, and follow their instructions on how to bring it in
If it is smoking, hissing, or getting hot on its own, move away from it and call the fire service — do not try to handle it
Do not pack it or post it; we will arrange collection or tell you where it can be taken
The last point is the one to repeat, because customers who are trying to be helpful will otherwise box it up and take it to the post office.
Building the returns flow so this happens by default
The failure mode is never that nobody knew the rule. It is that the returns flow does not distinguish a swollen battery from a wrong-size helmet, and a busy agent approves both. The fix is structural: make the flow recognise the case and stop.
Hold the UN number, Wh rating and hazard class against every battery and every bike, so the flow knows a regulated item is involved from the product, not from the customer's description.
A dedicated dangerous-goods return reason that requires photos and asks the condition questions — swelling, heat, smell, leakage, impact, water — as separate answers, not a free-text box.
Any positive answer or any photo showing deformation routes the return to a person and suppresses label generation. Nothing about this step should be overridable by the customer-facing portal.
No-transport, damaged-and-defective freight, or specialist collection — one of the three, chosen by someone competent to choose it, recorded against the return with the evidence.
A battery that passes the condition questions is still fully regulated Class 9. Only DG-capable road carriers approved on your account should be offered; parcel and air services should not appear as options for that SKU at all.
Some will. A customer who shipped before approval, or a carrier who accepted what they should not have. Receiving should flag battery returns before the parcel is opened and send them to a segregated, non-combustible area rather than the general bench, with the unit held rather than automatically consigned onward and a disposal path recorded if it cannot safely move again.
None of this needs a large programme. It needs the flow to ask six questions, look at a photo, and refuse to print a label when the answers are wrong. The rest is a decision a human makes once per return, with the evidence in front of them.
Frequently asked questions
Can a customer post a swollen e-bike battery back to me?
No. A swollen or otherwise damaged lithium battery falls under the damaged-and-defective provisions of the dangerous goods regulations, which require a specific fire-containing packing instruction and a carrier approved for it, and which prohibit air transport entirely. Australia Post does not accept it, and a prepaid parcel label puts a thermal-runaway risk into a network that has not agreed to carry it. The return has to be resolved without the customer shipping anything.
Does the 100 Wh small-battery exception apply to e-bike batteries?
Almost never. The relaxation for small lithium batteries stops at 100 Wh per battery, and a typical e-bike pack is 400–800 Wh. An e-bike battery is fully regulated Class 9 dangerous goods even in perfect condition — UN3481 on the bike, UN3480 on its own — and damage then moves it into stricter provisions again.
Do I still have to refund or replace a battery I can't get back?
Yes. Under the Australian Consumer Law a battery that swells or overheats within a reasonable lifespan is very likely a major failure, and the consumer chooses between refund and replacement. The transport difficulty is the merchant's problem. You can reasonably require evidence — photos, serial number, condition answers — and you should use the same evidence for the supplier claim, but you cannot make the remedy conditional on the customer shipping a hazardous item.
What should the customer do with the battery in the meantime?
Stop using and charging it, keep it outside the house on a non-combustible surface away from anything flammable and away from exits, and do not put it in any bin or public battery drop-off. If it is smoking, hissing or getting hot on its own, move away and call the fire service. Tell them explicitly not to pack or post it — helpful customers will otherwise take it to the post office. For disposal, the staffed council transfer station is usually the answer: most accept lithium batteries in small quantities free of charge, but they should call first and say it is a damaged e-bike pack, since acceptance of full packs varies by council. Point them to their state fire service's guidance for the safety side rather than writing your own.
When is it worth shipping a damaged battery back at all?
When the value of the unit or the terms of the supplier warranty justify a compliant movement: road only, under the damaged-and-defective packing instruction, with a DG freight carrier whose account is approved for it, packaging supplied to the customer or handled by a collection service, and the transport document prepared by you. For most consumer packs the cost of that exceeds the replacement value, and no-transport with local disposal is the better outcome. Units showing active thermal signs should go to a specialist collector regardless of value.
What if the battery arrives at the warehouse anyway?
Assume some will — customers ship before approval, and carriers occasionally accept what they should not. Receiving should be able to identify a battery return before the parcel is opened and divert it to a segregated, non-combustible area rather than the general bench. Hold it rather than consigning it onward automatically, inspect it there, and if it cannot safely move again record the disposal path against the return so the decision is on the record.
Does a battery recall change how the return works?
Yes. A manufacturer recall for a safety defect generally brings the battery within the damaged-or-defective provisions whether or not the individual unit is showing symptoms, because the defect has been identified at type level. Follow the recall's own logistics — the manufacturer or importer will normally have arranged collection or a disposal route — rather than improvising a return through your standard flow.