I’ve seen your story several times, always wondered…my condolences by the way, all of you guys included. First thought is maybe they weren’t capable of rated capacity, so you were really below 50%. But then as noted SMC apparently recommends a fairly low storage level…not sure for how long though, they are supposed to hold charge quite well, low self discharge. At the risk of flaming the faithful, (not my intention) there does seem to be a lot of SMC puffing stories lately. Related maybe?

Could it be an early generation thing? They certainly have/are improving in many respects. There were a lot of horror stories a few years ago it seems.