Soil PH Testing Kit – Faulty or am I failing basic chemistry?

Purchased a liquid indicator + powder soil PH testing kit! And the instructions advised running a ‘control’ to test kit is working. They advised that the dye + indicator powder should be 7!

So I used three wells the first with just the indicator liquid, and two more with my soil!

But all three are indicative of 8.5! (Photo isn’t the best sorry!)

I then wanted to see if the indicator dye wasn’t working at all or if it was just my control was picking up some alkalinity from somewhere!

So I tried to test – kitchen white vinegar (acid), and baking powder (basic)

The kitchen white vinegar went a beautiful yellow – 4 on the chart, and the baking powder went green! Like a 6, and I was so confused! I found some white dish detergent, and got an 8.5 (bright purple)!

So any advice! Faulty kit? – basic mistakes? Any other home science tests to run! 😅