I have a house full of old GE switches. Poller never failed to update the status correctly, and the Refresh button has also always worked consistently. Sounds like there is something unique in your setup, either a hardware problem, or something wrong with how you set up the apps/rules. Make a post detailing the problems you are seeing, the community is great about helping with this kind of stuff. Hard to troubleshoot when nobody knows you are having a problem.