It was Christmas morning, and I had self gifted myself a Laguna Power Clean Cordless Pond Cleaner to keep my 4 Koi above ground pools clean, no sludge or debris on the bottom and sides of the pools ....
I had wanted this tool for a long time but its price was beyond my budget until Ocean Floor offerred me a
40% discount on any single item in their store.... It was retailed at $346.49 and 40% brought it down enough
that I could go ahead and give it to myself for Christmas only a few days away.
I enthusiastically opened the 5 ft long box and began assembling the tool. I was a little dismayed that the Laguna Operation and Maintenance Guide didn't have any instructions on how to put it together, but that has happened before with other products so I did the best I could by looking at the pictures of the cleaner on the box. It didn't take very long to assemble, but then I noticed that the instruction booklet said to charge the battery 4 hours before using. Ok, I thought to myself, but then read "IMPORTANT CHARGING NOTES", "When the battery is charging the light on the plug will be green. When the battery is fully charged, the light will turn to red." Well,.... this is certainly contrary to convention, I thought to myself. I put the battery into the charger and the light was red. Hmmm, something is strange, must already be charged. So I put the battery in my pond cleaner and it was working okay enough for me to try cleaning my largest pool. I finished cleaning the pool and was very happy with my new pond cleaner but still puzzled by the red versus green light indicators. I removed the battery from the tool and inserted it into the charger, the light was red. Okay, I thought to myself, we'll leave it in for the required 4 hours and see if it turns to green. The instructions said vice versa, but we all know documentation sometimes has errors, and in this case, the suspected erroneous instruction was consistent in three different languages of the documentation. I couldn't call their customer service because it was Christmas day, perhaps they might not know either.
After 4 hours charging time, the light turned green. The instructions were wrong. Maybe that is why they didn't provide any assembly instructions either since that would have really fouled things up if they too were similarly wrong.
When Right is Wrong, And Wrong is Right.... I learned that actually the light is red when charging, and it is green when finished and fully charged..... contrary to what their instruction and operation manual stated in 3 different languages.
When Truth is False, And False is Truth, verifiable by reality and life itself, we learn to ignore what normally should be accurate since we know emperically it isn't. Little by little misleading and false statements erode confidence, safety, and security in our economy, its goods and services that should have integrity and quality; it creates distrust both in the product, in the supporting documentation of the product, and discredits its vendor.
Red versus Green indicator lights. Imagine what would happen if this error occurred in our traffic stop lights! Christmas lights, red and green colors, it is all very pretty, but what is real? When Right is Wrong, And Wrong is Right.....who is accountable for the errors in the confounded, crazy confusion consequences?
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!
