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Apex Lamps I purchased a lamp for my Mitsubishi projector for $155. Was told it contained a genuine Ushio bulb. It contained an illegal counterfeit bulb that burned out after a mere 300 hours of use. Asked for a refund and was told to take a hike. Their warrenty is only good for 180 days, they defrauded me, tough luck. Alhambra California
It was getting a message that it was time to replace the lamp in my projector as it was years old and had thousands of hours. I went to the webpage apexlamps.com. Their replacement lamp for my model was about $50 less than the competitors so I should have been suspicious. I was so I called to insure that that it included the genuine Ushio bulb and they told me it did. Their web page claimed that these bulbs are good for approximately 2,000 hours depending on a few conditions. Even though it seemed too good to be true, on 9/7/17 I purchased the lamp from Apex lamps.
Apex lamps purchases the bulb and puts them into a case or housing that inserts into the projector and then sells them.
On 8/21/17 the lamb burned out after a mere 200-300 hours of use. I confirmed this by putting the old bulb back in that had years of service and thousands of hours. The bulb that I was sent had 10% of the bulb life that their website claims that it does. There is no warning that you may only get 200 hours out of their bulbs which they claim are good for 2,000. In fact other sites claim that their bulbs will last 3,500-5,000 hours. It burned out in 11 months with moderate use.
The only possible explanation left as to why this bulb burned out is that they mishandled the bulb as they put it into the lamp casing before shipping or that the bulb is a counterfeit bulb. Counterfeits are very common and can find their way into a distributor’s inventory. The sale of counterfeits is very much illegal and violates copy write infringements and constitutes fraud. This would explain the fact that there can sell their product at a 25% discount and why it would burn out prematurely.
I reviewed the markings and looked at the information on counterfeitlamps.com. The item was indeed a fake and a cheap knockoff. This is fraud and a violation of trademark laws. Rather than paying $155 for a $200 lamp that I could have gotten elsewhere, I paid $155 for a lamp that I could have purchased for $70 elsewhere. It is illegal for Apex lamps to be selling counterfeit lamps.
I just want a refund and hope that my projector was not damaged by the illegal bulb that they sold me.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Correction
#2Author of original report
Fri, August 25, 2017
The correct purchase date was 9/7/16. The aleged illegal cheap knockoff counterfeit bulb burned out on 8/21/17. It didn't even make it a year.
The 2000 hours that they quote for the average lifetime was for the USHIO bulb. They may need to call the dude in China to get the average lifetime of the alleged illegal cheap knockoff counterfeit bulb.