LED Bulb Failure and Cree Customer Service

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In January/February of 2014 I converted nearly the entire house to LED bulbs, many of which were Cree bulbs. I've had no issues whatsoever until this morning when one of the Cree TW series bulbs in the master bath failed to light completely. There was no warning, it just came on at about 5% of what it should be. I moved another bulb to the socket and it lit normally, so the issue was with the Cree bulb. Out of the 80 or so bulbs purchased this is the first issue, so I'm still quite pleased with the decision to convert to LEDs.

I emailed Cree a short time ago, and within an hour I had a response that a replacement bulb was being sent via FedEx and that the existing bulb could be disposed of. They didn't ask me for proof of purchase, no quibbling, nothing but a "we'll make it right" attitude.

Who says customer service is a thing of the past?
 
I had a Cree 100W LED fail a few months ago,and Home Depot took care of it,just had 2 more (a 100W and a 3 way) fail this past week.I'm done with Cree.Going to get cheapo China sourced EBAY LEDs for low bucks if they don't last any less..
 
Own 6 CREE EcoSmart branded downlights that are almost 3 years old now. No failure issues, but I am unsure of these newer, cheaper 'race to the bottom' models. Failure with these cheaper ones is expected though.

As for LED bulbs in general, check out the 2 for $5 Philips 60w LEDs @ Home Depot on special until end of this month. I was impressed! 800lm @ 7-8 watts, spreads light out just like a regular bulb. It's the closest to incandescent performance and looks with no LED funny business. They aren't dimmable but do behave well with dimmer switches. Purchased 16 of them. Only 2 buzz, but it was the light fixture, even regular incandescent bulbs buzz in it. They even work great in a fridge. They are rated to well below freezing.

I didn't bother to get the CREE even though I like the quality. The older bulbs are too heavy, large and their newer plastic cardboard ones aren't available in TW yet.
 
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Bought some from Costco. One was bad out of the box and one stopped working after 2 weeks. Feit brand. Will be calling Feit for replacements. If that does not work back to Costco.
 
I have had 3 failures of CREE of 10 bulbs. Not a great rate for
I was very discouraged if you read the related box they want the bulb mailed with original receipt to get a replacement. (Obnoxious really). The Home Depot I believe(or Lowe's) cannot recall gave me replacements no questions asked when I shared this with them.
 
Originally Posted By: rshaw125
Bought some from Costco. One was bad out of the box and one stopped working after 2 weeks. Feit brand. Will be calling Feit for replacements. If that does not work back to Costco.


I've had a lot of problems with Feit bulbs, even their incandescents. I stay away from the brand entirely now.
 
Originally Posted By: Pop_Rivit
Out of the 80 or so bulbs purchased this is the first issue, so I'm still quite pleased with the decision to convert to LEDs.



You have 80 bulb plugins in your house?
Congrats on getting Cree to respond and offer free service.
Now don't ever try that again with the other 79 bulbs. They are-on to you now. What you sold them in words, only works once.

All kidding aside, what is the warranty on those bulbs?
 
Originally Posted By: rshaw125
Bought some from Costco. One was bad out of the box and one stopped working after 2 weeks. Feit brand. Will be calling Feit for replacements. If that does not work back to Costco.

LED bulbs are much more expensive than CFL bulbs, especially when local power company subsidized CFL bulb to the tune of 9 cents each, buying LED bulbs at Costco is the safest way, they have lifetime warranty and the have record of all your purchases in their system.

I liked to convert CFL to LED the last few years, but waited for reliability report before dumping hundreds dollar into it. I have many CFL bulbs I bought at 9 and 19 penny each, it would lasted me another 5-10 years. I stay with CFL for now, since we have on average less than 3-4 light on a night for less than 4-5 hours each. Spending several hundreds for LED bulbs doesn't make sense in my case.
 
It's good to hear Cree's customer service lived up to the title.

I had two of the early 60W equivalent Crees start flickering after about a year in service. I tried Home Depot first and got them exchanged.

I noticed the guidelines for enclosed fixtures got a little more specific on the new packages. The 60W equivalents prohibit mixing with other types of bulbs in enclosed fixtures. The 75W says the same or maybe limits you to one bulb per enclosed fixture, and if I remember correctly, the 100W is not to be used in totally enclosed fixtures.

The two flickering bulbs were in an enclosed ceiling fixture in my kitchen. I was hoping they would do better than CFLs in that location--I had two or three CFLs in enclosed fixtures (including at least one Feit) flame out with spectacularly noxious smoke.

To be clear, the Cree electronics didn't fail that way, and the replacements are doing fine in the same fixture. I'm also using them in lamps without any problems.
 
I've got 12 Cree bulbs, all between 6 months and ~ 14 months old and haven't had any issues, but it's good to hear their customer service is easy to deal with. They produce very nice light and use very little power.

The fins for the heat sink do get too hot to touch for more than just a second, but even after being on for days they never get hotter, and if half a dozen bulbs are on for extended periods, they all feel approximately the same.

If any one is interested I'll use a IR gun and temp probe to see how hot they actually are after extended use.
 
Originally Posted By: HTSS_TR
Originally Posted By: rshaw125
Bought some from Costco. One was bad out of the box and one stopped working after 2 weeks. Feit brand. Will be calling Feit for replacements. If that does not work back to Costco.

LED bulbs are much more expensive than CFL bulbs, especially when local power company subsidized CFL bulb to the tune of 9 cents each, buying LED bulbs at Costco is the safest way, they have lifetime warranty and the have record of all your purchases in their system.

I liked to convert CFL to LED the last few years, but waited for reliability report before dumping hundreds dollar into it. I have many CFL bulbs I bought at 9 and 19 penny each, it would lasted me another 5-10 years. I stay with CFL for now, since we have on average less than 3-4 light on a night for less than 4-5 hours each. Spending several hundreds for LED bulbs doesn't make sense in my case.


I'm with you. I have a whole box of CFL's to go through before even considering LED's.

Every time there is a thread about some new deal on LED's and the so called payback vs a CFL people like to tout the lifetime but often forget the reliability. Clearly reliability is not there yet for LED's (based on the multiple failures mentioned in this thread) and this is a critical factor when making a high purchase cost vs high operating cost for payback.
 
Originally Posted By: R80RS
Originally Posted By: rshaw125
Bought some from Costco. One was bad out of the box and one stopped working after 2 weeks. Feit brand. Will be calling Feit for replacements. If that does not work back to Costco.


I've had a lot of problems with Feit bulbs, even their incandescents. I stay away from the brand entirely now.


Not impressed with Feit CFLs. Widely differing life spans on bulbs installed on the same switch.
 
I have 240 Cree bulbs in service, two failed within a year. Home Depot swapped them out no questions asked.

So far I am very pleased with them.
 
FWIW, I'm happy with the ~$2 Utilitech 60w equiv LED bulbs from Lowes. I've got a few going.

I've been pleasantly surprised with the results of a simple email or phone call with respect to issues with lighting products. In addition to that, I've had Home Depot and Lowes swap lamps out no questions asked. In response to an email I had with Cooper lighting some years ago, they send me a whole new fixture without even wanting the inop unit back. This was a on a 70w metal halide dusk/dawn barn fixture that lasted a month.

To me, any lighting product is going to be hit/miss these days. I see it all the time in (high dollar) industrial lighting. You're lucky to get a few years out of a fixture. Others can go for decades. OTOH, we have some ancient mercury vapor and HPS lighting that have been lit for ~20yrs+, only going off during power outages.
 
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I'll bet most problems are heat related. The heat sink on there gets too hot to touch but probably has 10-20% more wiggle room. If you put especially the 70-100 watt into and ENCLOSED place you basically have created an easy bake OVEN and they will fail.

Only use in fixture with vents and they can last a long time.

An incandescent bulb wont fail in the same environment cause the filament is already hot enough to glow. Electronics however will fail with a tiny fraction of that heat.
 
Unfortunately there's no way around all the little electronic bits in these lamps. Lots of potential for failure.
 
I use the Phillips LEDs. One 60wE in the bathroom is on 24/7 and is more than 3 years old. There are also 3 halogen replacements in the kitchen fixtures and one other 60wE that are on 24/7. No issues whatsoever.

I couldn't wait to get rid of the Compact Fleurescents the Power Company dropped in the mailbox for free.

Bad quality light and created a lot of harmonic noise on the power line which played havoc with my main sound system and my electronic test equipment. Good riddance.

One final irony is CFL bulbs have bad Power Factor characteristics. On a Commercial Account with 3-phase power it's not an issue but there is no way to account for Power Factor in a Single Phase line (like the one going into your home).

Net result is the Power Company has to generate more power than they can bill for to residential customers, which means they must raise the price per Kilowatt-Hour to compensate.

The Efficiency Little White Lie ... Lamp efficiency is defined as wanted output plus unwanted output = 100%. Basically that is light plus heat = 60 watts for a 60w lamp, or for an incandescent that might be 6w plus 54w = 60w.

But what if the heat is wanted output? Any home when the HVAC system is producing heat it doesn't matter how that heat is generated. Electric heat (like that from a bulb) is more efficient than gas, oil, wood, etc.

BC Hydro (the Power Utility in British Columbia Canada) released a paper showing a switch to CFL by residential customers meant more than 10% increase in annual heating output is required to compensate for the loss of incandescent bulb heat.

Basically this means a strategy designed to actually save energy would have consumers switch from incandescent to CFL/LED and back with the change from heating to cooling seasons.

Add in Toxic waste (mercury) on disposal and the CFL bulb is easily the most ill-advised energy program ever. We should have just held off and gone straight from incandescents to LEDs, and the banning of incandescents is just pdlain wrong; considered as a combined lighting / heating device it is 100% efficient.
 
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