Over the winter, up in British Columbia, we got a cold snap that looked like it was going to south of -40 degrees (where almost all common consumer thermometers

Over the winter, up in British Columbia, we got a cold snap that looked like it was going to south of -40 degrees (where almost all common consumer thermometers, both home-weather station ones (that are very accurate, or at least consistent across multiple devices - +/- 0.2 degrees) and analog ones (including an industrial freezer thermometer). We went to our local home hardware, and for just $25 they had one that went to -60. Seemed like it was too good to be true - but they were popular, so we bought one. Put it out doors, at ~-34 degrees, the solution in the column split apart and the thermometer stopped functioning. We took it back in the next day (with lots of photographic evidence showing our other thermometers, digital and analog, all showing -40, and the one outlier showing a scattered -34) for a refund. When we bought it - I kind of thought it was too good to be true. So - did I commit fraud when I purchased it from home hardware in the belief that it would work as advertised, only to refund it the next day - and was that a game I shouldn't be playing (that is, taking a retailer at their word))?