dell power companion 18000 not charging

Hi,

My dell power companion 18000 didn't charge.  I plugged in my power companion to the AC adapter and it basically said 5 leds thinking it is fully charged.    Holding down the power button for 10 seconds, then letting go shows 1 constant led.  Again no problem.   Plugging in the battery to my latitude laptop doesn't charge at all.  Tapping the button once on the power companion turns it on and briefly (15 seconds) charges my laptop and then stops.  I did this maybe 5 more times and then the power companion was completely dead.  Tapping the power button shows no leds showing.  Holding down the power button again shows no leds.  This battery is now completely dead.  I plug my dell ac adapter into it and the battery now starts charging (shows 1 led).  Eventually it shows 2, 3, 4 ,5 leds and shows it is fully charged.  I still need to test how much power it really has but I think it is fully charged.

This is the interesting bit.  I think there is a bug where it doesn't properly show the correct amount of power it has when it close to dead.  Because the battery thinks it is fully charged, it doesn't charge itself at all even though it is almost dead.   Probably there is no way to fix this unless there is a way to update the firmware through the power cord.

Dell uses some cheap ink and it shows.  My power companion isn't close to a year old and the ink is really coming off.  They should use better stuff but who cares about dell quality control?
www.dropbox.com/.../2016-09-17 09.18.42.jpg