Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I've had that red light thing happen but when I checked what I found was that the batteries weren't fully charged. The red light was telling me that there wasn't enough charge to finish the 60 or 90 second cyele. If you have the recharger then try that and see if it helps. If not then buy some new batteries and that should do it I would think.

Now you still may prefer the filter and if so then that's fine. Batteries are a pain to worry about on something that you need like a water treatment system. For myself I prefer that worry to the problems of filter clogs,etc but to each his own.