Very disappointing to me to read this (but I'm glad I did). I've had my eye on those "glow in the dark" gazing balls for a while now...
Last summer DH put a little solar hummingbird stake that my sister-in-law gave me out in the flower garden and all summer I was wondering why it wasn't lighting up (although, to be brutally honest, there were so many weeds that I thought maybe I just couldn't see it from the house...). Then it turned out that he had neglected to slide the on-off switch to "on"