Buyer Beware - LED Purchases Gone Wrong

Over the past several years, we have received phone calls, emails, and chats from customers that have asked us to help them solve bad LED purchases. Others have asked us to unravel installation issues and bad lighting in their facilities. Some of these unfortunate customers were led astray by other vendors with false claims of lighting performance or they bought a bad product altogether.

In other cases, they decided to buy what they thought was a similar product from other vendors, only to find out the products weren’t similar at all. Here are a few of those stories. Hopefully, it will allow you to learn from others who were misled or made bad purchases.

1. Where’s the Driver?

We had a call from a customer wondering why the lights we sent to him didn’t have LED Drivers included. It turns out they bought lights from another site. The lights were very cheap.

The cost of the drivers, as they later found out, was an extra $94 per light. When you add that to the cost of the LED UFO high bay fixtures, the price was more than our lights (drivers included). What appeared to be a bargain turned out to be anything but.

We went to the competitor’s site. In this buyer’s defense, it was not obvious this light did not come with a driver. Why a site would sell a light without a driver is akin to buying a car without an engine. It’s clever because the fixtures themselves appear to be inexpensive, but it makes no sense to do this.

2. Bargain Lights with 6500K Color LED Chips

This is another common buyer-beware scenario. Some sites list ‘cheap’ lights at hard-to-believe prices. Upon closer inspection, you will find these lights had old LED chips or high kelvin 6500K Color Temperature LEDs.

6500K is a harsh white-blue color most people complain about. We don’t offer it and have never sold a 6500K product to anyone. The highest kelvin we sell is 5000K.

The second scenario is these lights might have old chips that are not very efficient. So, if you are shopping by looking at watts and not lumens, you might be buying someone’s old inventory. And by doing this, you’re not getting the latest efficient LEDs.

Every so often, we get a call from someone claiming they found the ultimate bargain. And more often than not, it’s a 6500K fixture at 100 lumens/watt. It’s a bargain because the supplier is trying to sell old inventory.

3. Re-purchasing Lights Because What Was Bought Won’t Work

This problem is showing up more often than you think. A customer calls because he installed LED Lights from another competitor. And the lighting is not bright enough, or there are too many shadows.

In some cases, this happens because the customer was not given a lighting plan. At other times, the supplier did not understand the requirements of the customer and provided them with a solution that produced unsatisfactory results.

A small but ever-increasing part of our business is fixing these types of issues. It’s unfortunate for the customer because this becomes a costly proposition because they’re forced to do a lighting project twice.

We offer free lighting plans. We will take the time to understand your needs and requirements so that the solution we provide will meet your needs, the first time!

4. Swapping out Fixtures After Getting a Lighting Plan

This is something we will try to explain to a customer. Getting a lighting plan is a good first step. Implementing the plan but using a different fixture than what was recommended has a high probability of failure. We don’t use this as a scare tactic. It’s just the truth about how lighting works.

All lights are not the same. They produce different lumens, have different beam angles, and produce different results. In a 100 x 100 space, its amazing to see the variations between two different 150-Watt LED fixtures. While on paper they seem similar but the results are often quite different.

In one case, we had a potential customer ask us to do a warehouse lighting plan. They then used our plan but used a different fixture than what was recommended. The results were predictable, and unfortunately for the customer, not good. This ‘customer’ called us back to complain about our lighting plan. But the plan wasn’t the problem. It was the fixture.

They then asked for a second lighting plan to fix the problem. Unfortunately, they had bought their fixtures on a site that does not provide their associated IES files. So, fixing the problem wasn’t even an option.

5. Buying Lights Based on Watts and Not Lumens

Most LED Lights are different, even though they have the same wattage. What’s different about them is their efficiency, lumen output, color temperature, and optics. The net result is that two lights that appear to be the same and have the same wattage may produce completely different results.

The different types of results you see include different light levels (measured in foot candles) and unbalanced light levels between lights. This is a phenomenon called shadowing. It appears as very bright spaces under the lights and dark areas between light locations.

6. Buy Cheap – Buy Twice

LEDs should last a long time if you buy quality components. And quality isn’t much more expensive than ‘great’ deals if you buy from reputable sources. But not all LEDs come from reputable sources.

Then there are the stories we hear about lights failing in mass within 6 months to a year after their purchase. It happens more often than you think.

It’s important to buy from a reputable source who’s prepared to stand by you and support you. And if you’re selling quality products, then that should be the rule, not the exception.

7. Warranty Issues

About 3-5 times a week, we get calls from people who bought lights from other sites. Their lights are failing, and they are not getting replies from the website they bought from. And there is nothing we can do about it. Its important to find a reputable company that stands behind their products. If you want to check our reviews, many of the reviews come from customers after we process their warranty claim. LED Lights are electronics, and even the best ones will have an issue from time to time. Getting those issue resolved are as important as selling the light – at least they are to us!