I have noticed that when recharging standby cells that have not been used that the protected cells always take longer to top-up. I assume the protection circuit is a parasitic drain, does anybody have any ideas of average drain or suggested recharge intervals?
I have checked a few protection circuits and the drain was very low, i.e. a few uA. With that rate it will take many years to drain a battery.
Definitely there's a small drain in the cells, and even when they are used. It varies based on the IC's and FETs, and the number of FETS's used.
Let's say that Seiko IC that is used in some cells, official specs not my measurements.
Operation 3.5 uA typ. 7.0 uA max.
Power-down 0.1 uA max.
I once had a Ultrafire 4000mAh, cheap battery that drained itself in just a few weeks. I ripped off the circuit and now it can hold its charge for a year or more. The cell on the other hand, is only ~1000mAh in real.
It could be that the circuit was defect.Can you take a photos of the circuit?
On the other hand 4000mAh is already letting you know that you have problems with the cell or you will have.
You're paying extra for the battery wrap, I guess it's just more expensive to print 4000mAh on it. :)
Well, at least it's usable.
Sorry. It’s been a while and it’s gone. That circuit was one of those UltraFire written on them. Maybe it was just a bad sample I got. But never had good luck with UF batteries. Oh wait!! I once had a UF 2400 unprotected blue cell with 2000mah capacity. The next batch was only 200mah, though. 
This is what I had hoped/expected, I have been charging some in a casual fashion and seemed to notice a difference which I had not expected, I need to pay more attention next time and see if something is amiss
ive been measuring self-discharge rate of unprotected 10440's:
i make heavy use of my protected 10440 cells (Tank E09, iTP A3) and i would use my unprotected 10440 cells only on special occasions (e.g. the iTP A3 requires 2 washers. two loose washers cause flickering and mode-switching). if need my unprotected 10440's (e.g. for the iTP A3 without washers), then i will interrupt and stop the above self-discharge rate measurement. i dont think that i will get to 6 or 12 months straight. i hope so, but i dont think so.