My email to Lights of America about compact fluorescents' quality

[Kolesar]

Dear Lights of America Customer Quality Team,

I have thrown away more of your compact fluorescent ballasts than I have replaced bulbs on. I have been buying your products since the 1980s, and my experience has been generally bad. Typically, on the first sign of trouble with a fluorescent lamp, I buy a replacement bulb. Often that does not fix the problem with your products and I have to replace the ballast and bulb.

For example, I purchased a number of LOA 22W circular lamps a few years ago. Four of the five experienced failure at about the same time, and replacement T9 bulbs will not light in three of them. The ballast is model: 2602/5000-1B. I expect I will throw them away. If you send me a carton, I will ship them back to you for analysis in your quality lab. I'll keep them around for a few weeks.

Another thing that annoys me about LOA products is that there is no label for which replacement bulb to buy. Even worse, there have been no LOA brand replacement bulbs in the store where I bought your original product, and often no fluorescent replacement bulbs of any brand. I recall finding my way to a hardware store and trying to figure out if some GE circline was the right replacement. At that time, I had no idea that there were differences between magnetic and electronic ballasts. I had no idea that the older and less efficient ballast & bulb designs were being obsoleted by US standards. Fortunately, I can now look this up on the internet (which I could not do ten years ago), but how many customers are going to bother to do that?

I started buying CFLs because of the conservation ethic of using less electricity. I would imagine that your poorly-functioning and poorly-supported products have frustrated a lot of consumers who bought your product for the same reason I did. You owe it to us to better support these products and produce better ballasts. The supposed money savings that are promoted on the package are lost when the ballast fails before the bulb. You are going to lose customers over these quality problems and, even worse, you are going to turn consumers away from CFLs and back to incandescent bulbs that they know they can rely on. Since efficiency is the easiest way to manage our energy situation in this country, it is of paramount importance to attain consumer acceptance of these products so that we can solve the problems of smog, particulate pollution, and global warming that cause disease and will cause species extinction on Earth.

Yours Truly,
...
Two weeks and I have not heard back from the LOA Quality Team

[OneBlueSky]

1. if your experience has been generally bad . . .

why have you been buying their products since the 1980s? . . . just curious . . .

[Kolesar]

2. I have been hoping they would improve them & there are few alternatives

I bought a bunch of them in the 1980s for home use. About five years ago, I needed a large number of CFLs for an application at work. I selected LOA brand because they had the brightest lamps in the form factor that I needed.

Even at this time, LOA still seems to be the dominant brand.

[LiberalEsto]

3. compact fluorescents

I've had exactly the same problem with the circular lights, and have stopped buying their products.

[Unperson 309]

4. Get An OTT Lite!

OTT Truecolor lamps are the way to go! I've had mine for four years, now and I love it! Changed the bulb once in that time, about a year ago. They make floor lamps, bird cage lamps, table and desk lamps and they are wonderful. You can find them in high end pet stores, sewing supply stores and online. Google is your friend!

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