Do manufacturers have any responsibility for the malfunction of their devices?

[jda]

Not many want to hear this, but there are decade-reliable products for every necessary piece of tank equipment, except for heaters, which only seem to last me 3-5 years. All of these can be used in redundancy so that failure does not mean death. Most of these are not even very expensive and most have good warranties. It is the people who screw this up most of the time. Other than the tank exploding, I have no equipment that that could fail that would cause a crash unless it was not noticed for days and days.

Not many want to hear this either, but auto dosing is not even close to being foolproof and reliable - many crashes have been reported for many years.

 

[Tyler Flynn]

Not many want to hear this, but there are decade-reliable products for every necessary piece of tank equipment, except for heaters, which only seem to last me 3-5 years. All of these can be used in redundancy so that failure does not mean death. Most of these are not even very expensive and most have good warranties. It is the people who screw this up most of the time. Other than the tank exploding, I have no equipment that that could fail that would cause a crash unless it was not noticed for days and days.

Not many want to hear this either, but auto dosing is not even close to being foolproof and reliable - many crashes have been reported for many years.

If you are going to auto dose you NEED to be testing regularly to know what is going in your tank. You need to know what your levels are so you know what your consumption is and to make sure your equipment is operating properly.
I change my heater (s) every 18-24 months wether it looks good or not. Being diligent with what you have, and spending time with your tank regularly will go a long way in you being able to see an issue just from what your corals and fish look like

 

[mehaffydr]

I work for a manufacturer and deal with warranty issues all the time and I don't see this as Neptune's responsibility. The reason I say this is that the user clearly new the product was defective as he stated and still put it into service. He stated that he had been doing it his old way for years and just got impatient because he had a new toy and couldn't wait to use it.
He should have just continued to use his old method that had worked for years and waited for a replacement product.