Energy Saving Lightbulbs Vs. Regular Lightbulbs?

elstimpo

Sterlingtimes wrote: »

The retailer, of course, has a responsibility in contract to its customers. But I understand that in tort responsibility for a claim could lie to the distributor, the importer, or the manufacturer if the manufacturer (if the manufacturer can be found). A retailer is probably not always in a position to ensure that a product meets the required safety standards.

The few LED bulbs that I bought from Aldi all failed. The TCP LED bulbs bought from Homebase have all been fine. I can see that there is a quality difference.

It is solely the importing companies responsibilities to make sure that the products they are importing for sale within the EU complies with European law.

An Asian manufacturer who ships a dodgy product to European with CE stamped on it will face absolutely no recourse what so ever because it's not their responsibility.

There should be no excuses, any retailer who doesn't have the ability to check probably shouldn't be selling these products as we are dealing with electrical equipment and the number of reports of LED lamps being found with exposed wires in metal heat sinks in the UK is getting really scary. So bad that when a large shipment was discovered at a UK port, it was featured on BBC Fake Britain - these products were destined to be sold on the internet. People think this just relates to dodgy ebay sellers too, which couldn't be further from the truth.

elstimpo

Sterlingtimes wrote: »

The few LED bulbs that I bought from Aldi all failed. The TCP LED bulbs bought from Homebase have all been fine. I can see that there is a quality difference.

The vast majority of LED Lamps will all fail well before the quoted lifespan figures (although outside of the warranty period)and the No.1 reasons is the capacitor in the power supply. Over 90% of products we test do not have a capacitor of suitable quality to deal with the heat thats generated.

Cheap LED lamps contain the cheapest raw materials, they often have non-existent heat sinks with means the products will get hot and then the cheap capacitors, that probably couldn't deal with the generated heat of a product with a good heat sink, simply over heats quickly and dies.