@CarlD: What D-boy apparently said was, "We'll honor the warranty this time, even though we don't think we're obligated. But we won't do it again."

@rajung: Extremely high chlorine will damage some liners. Unfortunately, low chlorine will damage other liners. And there's no way I've been able to find that allows you to tell -- in ADVANCE -- whether you have a liner that will be damaged by extremely high chlorine, or one that will be damaged by even low chlorine.

Perhaps more importantly, even pool manufacturers like D-boy can't tell the difference. Vinyl sheet varies greatly in quality, but a low-grade sheeting may LOOK and FEEL identical to a high-grade sheeting, at least when new.

My guess is one of two things happened:

1. You inadvertently raised the chlorine VERY high while the stabilizer was very low.

OR

2. D-boy got a batch of liners made from low-grade, possibly Chinese, sheeting.

And from where we're sitting, there's no way to even guess which one it was!


You report that D-boy wrote:
I write this to encourage you in proper maintenance of your pool. We suggest you maintain chlorine levels of 1-3 ppm and immediately brush up any powder residue after shocking your pool. This will help maintain the color and the life of your liner.
The problem is that FC=3 ppm -- a level approved by D-boy -- will damage a LOT of liners, if the CYA is less than 10 ppm. But FC=10 ppm is unlikely to damage any liners if CYA is > 150 ppm.

American conventional AG pool makers are under a LOT of price pressure from soft-side pool sales. The temptation to use imported custom-pattern Chinese liners is HUGE. If you look at these Alibaba listings:
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/vinyl-pool-liners.html
you'll see vinyl pool sheeting offered for as low as $1/sq meter. That translates to a manufacturing cost for sheeting for a 27' round pool of $100 vs $1,000 for US or Canadian goods!

In contrast to the Japanese market ethics, the Chinese market places NO value on product quality or integrity in business dealings. Where Japanese might feel justified in ripping off "gaijin", Chinese companies rip off local customers with even more eagerness than they do the "gwai lo" or (gweilo). A close friend of my son's has been training for a number of years to work in international marketing, focusing on the Chinese ex-im market with the US. He's confided to my son that virtually all the Chinese he has met value ONLY high profits. The ONLY concern they have with quality is, "Can we get away with it?"

US companies that successfully import Chinese made goods have Chinese dialect fluent engineering and product TEAMS whose sole job is to make sure that Chinese makers deliver the product quality they've agreed to deliver.

Companies like Doughboy are probably NOT likely to be big enough to have a qualified and dedicated import product quality team . . . and without one, they WILL get ripped off.

Over the past 5 years, I've seen more and more evidence of this happening with plumbing goods, with equipment, and with pools. Intex US enforces moderately good product quality on the cluster of makers that supply their products, but the company supplying Walmart's "Pro Series" has delivered intermittently TERRIBLE product quality, coupled with even worse product support.

I don't know if they'll tell you, but ask D-boy who made the sheeting used in your liner. If the answer is in Chinese, I think you've found the problem!