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Unfortunately, occurrences like you describe aren't rate and usually have as single cause: defective installation.
Liner manufacturers are somewhat complicit, but don't cause the problems but rather 'overlook' the causes since acting otherwise would cost them THEIR customers, who are the installers, not pool owners.
To understand what may have happened, you have to understand that pool liners, in order to fit without wrinkles are 'stretched' into place, by installing them on warm sunny days, and 'sucking' them into position using several shop vacs or pool liner vacs. There are -- roughly speaking -- two ways to do this:
1. Purchase a liner that is only slightly small for the pool.
Installing liners like this almost always requires a BUNCH of finagling and shifting the liner around, to get it to fit without wrinkles. It's a lot of work, even for skilled installers, and takes unskilled installers FOREVER. But, you end up with a liner that is NOT over-tensioned and that WILL (usually) last a lot longer.
2. Purchase a liner that is the correct shape and edge length, but substantially too 'shallow' for the pool.
When you over-stretch a liner into place, wrinkles are rarely a problem, and installations go faster and require less skill. One marker of this happening is a liner that does not fit snugly into the corners and angles of the pool until it is COMPLETELY full.
One problem with this approach is that the material is inevitably overstretched in places, and thus thin and weak. Additionally, unacceptably high levels of stress occur at the skimmers and inlets, and at the bead. Finally, the high elastic tension means the liner will instantly come out of place as soon as the water is a bit low . . . and often will NOT go back in correctly with the pool is refilled.
Of course, it's hard to prove that this is what happened, especially since the liner maker is not 'on your side' so to speak. Also there are a few uncommon OTHER possible reasons for such a failure.
So, to answer your questions:
1. The things mentioned are possible contributing factors. However, the NORMAL failure with liner lift from water is just some wrinkles.
2. My guess is that the installer is 90% or more responsible . . . but that you can't prove it. However, if you have a way to check past installations by him over the previous 2 years, I'd bet you find similar failures, maybe 1 in 10 or even 1 in 5.
3. Nope, no hope. Sorry.
4. Get a better installer and a decent liner (which yours may have been).
Sorry!
PS. If the liner material is brittle or stiff . . . then it might NOT be the installer's fault.
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