I bought some last time. Half of them LEAKED after light usage, two leaked without ever having been used. Been in contact with woot, who offered RMA, and Duracell, which wants those batteries back. They might not be genuine.
That’s bizarre. I’ve basically only had batteries leak when either left in a device for years (especially if left in after they’re already dead), or repeatedly exposed to large temperature changes. Otherwise maybe just one or two duds here and there (though more often the store brand or Ray-o-vac ones than bigger name brand batteries) but certainly not anywhere near 50% failure rate; maybe up to 2% of the batteries I’ve bought in recent years which is a mixture of Ray-o-vac, Member’s Mark, Kodak (via Woot), Duracell and Energizer, plus a few oddballs from time to time.
I’ve had an unusual number of leaked batteries in the past year. Before, it had been at least a decade since any leaked. There have been at least four, two of which were Duracell; the others Eveready. Eihter AA or AAA. In all cases it was in gear that was turned off (physical switch) and sitting unused in a drawer or on a shelf, inside the house. No temperature issues. I went to use them, found them dead and noted a lot of leaking once I opened them to change the batteries. All of which used at least 3 cells in series. That is, they were in battery trays that wire them all together (but the devices had hard power-off switches).
Can’t pin down the purchasing source but it’d have been either a local Home Depot, CVS or Costco.