Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this battery along with the Watchdog BWE backup sump pump back in June of 2008. At the time I forked out close to 150 dollars for the battery plus acid thinking the extra money spent would equal extra peace of mind. Well, it's March 2011 and I now have to replace the battery. We haven't been getting alot of rain and after a dry fall and winter, so my sump pumps (I have two pumps in the same hole, one the Watchdog the other my primary pump) haven't gotten alot of exercise lately. I try to check out the operational status of my Watchdog at least every six months to make sure all is well. For the last few days we have been getting alot of rain so the sump pump has been quite active. I decided that it was a good opportunity to check everything again. My test was simple, simulate a power outage by unplugging my primary pump and the trickle charger on the Watchdog so that it would run on the battery only. My first problem, which really has nothing to do with this review but surprised me nonetheless, was the first time the Watchdog pump activated, nothing happened. When I say, "nothing happened" I mean the pump activated, but did not pump any water. Upon further investigation, it seemed the pump had lost its prime. I actually had to re-prime the pump to get things flowing again. I was alarmed, because if this had been a real power outage and I had not been home, I may very well have returned to a flooded basement. This is a new development that has never happened before, so I'm not sure what the problem is and will investigate further, but I figured it was worth mentioning here. Now the battery problem. After I got the pump pumping again all seemed well. That is, until the fourth cycle of the pump, the "defective/bad battery" light illuminated and sounded an alarm indicating something was wrong with the battery. Now, I was really worried. First the pump didn't want to pump on its first (and most crucial) pumping. Now the battery was having issues, so out came the multi-tester. To my dismay, the unloaded DC voltage on the battery read 11.9 volts and the loaded voltage read 11.5/11.6 volts. I tested the charger just to make sure there wasn't a problem there, but the voltage read 13.9 volts in two second bursts (two seconds on, two seconds off) which is typical of a trickle charger. Next, I popped off the covers to check the acid levels, and all was well there too. At this point, I was hoping that maybe my tester and the control unit were somehow both wrong. Not likely. As I was performing my tests, the pump kept on pumping, that is until about the 10th or 11th cycle when everything came to a screeching halt, when the battery finally gave up and the pump began clicking, unable to draw enough power to pump. At this point just to exhaust all of my options, I pulled the battery and put it on a Snap-On commercial grade battery charger that I own, that also has a built in tester to check and see if the battery is any good or not. Not to my surprise, the battery was bad, and even though it would hold a charge, it didn't hold it for long. So much for 7.5 hours of continuous run time. All of this is not uncommon however. Batteries DO go bad, even relatively new ones. What irritated me however, was upon further investigation of the literature that accompanied the battery, I discovered the warranty was only a year! I can get a Duralast (just a DieHard battery thats been rebadged) deep cycle battery from Autozone with a 3 year warranty for 90 dollars, and I know they are good batteries. I've been using them in all of my vehicles for many years. So take this review how you will, but I know how I will be spending my hard earned money on the next battery I purchase.