LED bulbs that got dim or started flickering

[Nathan Schrenk]

In late 2013 or sometime in 2014 I replaced dozens of BR30 bulbs in recessed fixtures in my house with CREE brand LED bulbs purchased from Home Depot. Many of these bulbs have failed recently, getting very dim or flickering back and forth between dim and full brightness. I brought a few into Arch Reactor and Gavin took one of them apart and managed to fix it somehow, but I am not sure what he did: I think he said there was a bad connection.

I believe the LED components in most of these bulbs are working, but the failure is somewhere else in the bulb. I currently have 13 or 14 of them. I am planning on dropping these off at an e-waste recycling place sometime unless someone would like them, in which case I could bring them into AR.

Nathan

[Frank Kallal]

Don't those have like a 5 year warranty on them or something?

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[Jim S]

Would be interesting to know what happened and how complicated the fix is.  They have a 10 year warranty so if you have the receipt you can send them back for replacement.  I have a couple of the glass bulb cree 60W (equivalent) bulbs that went bad after a couple years and one that the glass bulb just fell off of (poor adhesive application I think).  But I have had quite a few more that are still going strong.  Surprised you had such poor reliability.

[Ray Scheufler]

I think they are a 5 or 10 year. I had a bulb fail and I filled out the contact form and they sent me a new bulb and had me dispose of the failed bulb. I didn't need a receipt, they verified warranty based on the date code.

Ray Scheufler

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[Nathan Schrenk]

Their web site claims a 5 year warranty. http://creebulb.com/warranty/  I selected "65 Watt Replacement BR30 Soft White Flood" in the Legacy section of that page.

I just searched through my email and I do have receipts for some of them. Unfortunately it appears that the warranty replacement procedure requires the UPC code proof of purchase. I did not save the UPC codes from the packages.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. I think I'll send them back to Cree with the receipts and try to get them to honor their warranty even though I don't have the UPC proof of purchase(s). Even if they don't send me replacements, they'll hopefully be better equipped to properly dispose/recycle them.

Nathan

[Jim S]

Ray,

I thought the warranty required return of the bulbs.  I just haven't gotten to it.  Think I will try without return first.  So you just sent them the info via the contact form on the cree site?

Jim

On Sunday, January 8, 2017 at 9:13:36 PM UTC-6, Ray Scheufler wrote:

I think they are a 5 or 10 year. I had a bulb fail and I filled out the contact form and they sent me a new bulb and had me dispose of the failed bulb. I didn't need a receipt, they verified warranty based on the date code.

Ray Scheufler

On Jan 8, 2017 8:49 PM, "Frank Kallal" <fr...@kallal.net> wrote:

Don't those have like a 5 year warranty on them or something?

On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 6:29 PM, Nathan Schrenk <nat...@schrenk.org> wrote:

In late 2013 or sometime in 2014 I replaced dozens of BR30 bulbs in recessed fixtures in my house with CREE brand LED bulbs purchased from Home Depot. Many of these bulbs have failed recently, getting very dim or flickering back and forth between dim and full brightness. I brought a few into Arch Reactor and Gavin took one of them apart and managed to fix it somehow, but I am not sure what he did: I think he said there was a bad connection.

I believe the LED components in most of these bulbs are working, but the failure is somewhere else in the bulb. I currently have 13 or 14 of them. I am planning on dropping these off at an e-waste recycling place sometime unless someone would like them, in which case I could bring them into AR.

Nathan

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[Ray Scheufler]

That is what I did. I asked if they wanted the bulbs back and they said no.

Ray Scheufler

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[Nathan Schrenk]

I filled out CREE's customer support form with details of the warranty replacement I was requesting and they responded saying they would ship me out 12 replacement bulbs in a few days, no need to return the defective bulbs. I'm pretty pleased with that result!

So given that they told me to dispose of the failed bulbs, if anyone wants them, let me know. They have a somewhat heavy metal heatsink around the base that could possibly be scavenged and look cool in some type of craft project.

Nathan

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[Xsfx2000]

The next time I can come by, I'll take 'em.

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