Battery, Starter, Alternator
 

This morning I went out to go to work and my car wouldnt start. The starter just clicked ("Starter issues", I thought), but my dash lights would go dark too.
"It cant be the battery...its 1month old!"
But I swapped it out anyway and dropped in the optima (my winter battery) 5mins later and it started right up, zero problems.

Im going to have to wait until saturday or so to take the battery back for a check, but what do you think it is?
Alternator/charging system?
Bad battery?
Starter going out?

i say it is the battery, but look for a bad connection (maybe you did not tighten one of the posts enough)

Maybe bad contact.. Try cleaning the terminals and cable connectors.

its summer, sometimes batteries just die in the heat..

Contacts are clean and tight - I used a bush and the ooze.
After days of the optima and zero problems, Im calling bad battery

Does it get how where you live? Like +30C..

Sure, 95F (35C) last week

AND...its the battery. I finally got around to taking the battery in - they ran a test ("Hmm...seems a little low!" No shit). They recharged it for free and I came back after a couple hours.
Wouldnt recharge and I got a different one for free. Yippie...

If this one dies like the last one, Im throwing it through the store window, like that old discount tire commercial.

i loved that commercial

Just an afterthought Pat, but did you bother checking to make sure the cables were ground? Sometimes that can slowly suck away battery power over a period of time. I just find it hard to believe that a battery would die after a month and not be rechargeable. That'd have to one shitty battery.

Yeah, that was the first thing I checked, after I got home from work.
Plus, they tried to charge it, and it failed, and I havent had any issues w/ the new one or the optima when I ran that.
It was really just that shitty of a battery