Hi & Batter Question

[kwrhodes]

Hi, New to the forum and relatively new to Fords. We purchased our '08 Escape (non-Hybrid) near the end of '07 and have really enjoyed the experience. My wife uses it for local business travel and especially likes the size. It's big enough to carry her equipment and behaves like a truck, but small enough easily fit into city traffic and it gets very good gas mileage on the freeway.

So far it has given us nearly uninterrupted service (>40,000 miles) with only routine maintenance. There was an issue with transmission and engine gaskets that needed replacement, but this was handled under the extended warranty and without hassle by our dealer.

One question has come up though, in the past few weeks we've started to get a dead battery after running the auxiliaries (radio/stereo) for only 15 to 20 minutes with out the engine running. The dealer said that the battery is fine and that we just need to start the engine every 15 minutes. This seems a little out of the ordinary to me. I would expect the battery to stay charged for much longer with just the radio running. Is this something specific to this model and year? Thanks!