Complaint Review: Autolumination - Higley Arizona

I feel compelled to set the record straight as far as the claims made in their last rebuttal. I did in fact answer all their questions, and sent them two additional emails, none of which they ever responded to. It was for that reason that I decided to file a claim here.

I've attached their email and my response in its entirity so that others may judge the veracity of their statements.

As far as the the claim that I could have bought a $1.99 protector, this is the first time that they made mention of it. They sell LED replacement bulbs for automobiles. I don't feel that it is unreasonable for me to expect that they will work in my car without my having to purchase additional protection devices. If protection devices are required, why then aren't they already designed into the bulb? There are now many replacement LED bulbs on the market for home use. Do we need to buy additional protection devices in order to use them?

The others bulbs I purchased from them all continue to function in my vehicle without any problem.

Here then is the email train;

On 13-Sep-11 10:29 PM, [email protected] wrote:

Scott

I personally tested the replacement bulb you were sent.  It worked perfectly when it left here and the diodes are all in there as they should be.  I am not sure why you reversed the bulb in the socket.  They have polarity and only light installed one way, so since you already knew it was installed the right direction, there was no reason to turn it around.

Turning the bulb around did not cause your fuse to pop...that happened because something in the socket was connecting the two sides creating an arc.  The leds do not generate heat.  The power is coming from your car, not from the bulb.   It would be one thing if we saw routine failures with this bulb, but we just do not.  They are exceedingly reliable, and we very seldom get one back as bad in any way.  When one is bad, it is straight out of the box and those have one column out when they have trouble which is just a single solder that is incomplete.

What are you using them in, and where in the car please?

Thank you.

Tracy

[...and my response...]
Tracy,

I have LED bulbs in all the park/brake/turn locations on my vehicle, and I purchased all of them from you. If you check your records, you will see that I have purchased hundreds of dollars of product from your company. All the bulbs, with the exception of this one, have worked flawlessly. The only reason I bought more was because I was not happy with the intensity of the previous bulbs.

When I bought this bulb, I bought two reds (for rear park and turn), two  whites (for reverse), and two ambers (for front turn and park). All those bulbs work fine. I took the red from the driver's side of the vehicle (the one that worked), and tried it on the passenger side of the vehicle (where the bulb didn't work), and that bulb worked perfectly fine.

This is the only bulb, out of the six that I bought, that is not working. I have put the previous LED bulb (one of your tower series) back in and it is working. The socket is fine and in fact, you will see that there is no sign of arcing or burning on the contacts. It was quite obvious that the burning occurred inside the bulb base itself as I could see base glow.

In hindsight, I wish I hadn't reversed the bulb, but the fact is that on a bulb that functioning correctly, it wouldn't matter if it was in reversed. The diode on the park light circuit may have been installed, but it didn't work. The bulb would appear to work when you tested it, but unless you test it with other bulbs together, you wouldn't have noticed that all the park lights come on when the turn signal is activated on this bulb.

This was a replacement bulb for one which I already sent you and had failed out of the box with one (or more) columns non-functional. If this type of manufacturing defect is possible, then why is it not possible that a component is faulty?

The vehicle I am driving is a 2006 Mercury Mariner Hybrid. As I previously stated, I have been using LED bulbs in this vehicle for several years. The 12 volt system in this vehicle is far more stable and cleaner than most vehicles because it is not sourced from a generator, but rather a DC-DC convertor off the main 330V vehicle battery. Unlike most vehicles, the 12V system does not change voltage as the engine speed varies. The vehicle is not the source of the bulb failure.

Scott

[...since that time, I had not heard anything from superlumination.com until they responded to my complaint filed here.]

There are several points in Scott's report that I am in agreement with and only a few on which we disagree.

On 8/18 he purchased six led lights from us.

On 9/9, we exchanged one of those lights for him.  It had one column of the leds fail during the time he had the bulb installed.

Prior to sending his replacement bulb, I tested it thoroughly, personally, using our commercial testing equipment.  It worked perfectly when I sent it to him.

After installing his new led Scott emailed and told me he had another problem with that same installation.  He told me that the new replacement bulb was not working correctly either in that same exact application as the one in which the first had failed.  Since I knew that this bulb was sent out in fully functional 100% working condition, I had questions about the installation itself. 

My reasoning was that before we again replaced a bulb for him, we needed to determine why he was having repeated failures in that same exact circuit in his vehicle.

To clarify this, it is important to understand that exterior led bulbs are virtually never plug and play replacements for incandescent/OE bulbs.  For that reason, testing them by plugging them into the car socket does not test the bulb itself.  That is something customers are frequently confused about and it is a key point.

I asked him a series of questions regarding the vehicle these were installed in and the manner in which they were being used.  I also asked him to remove the bulb and test it outside of the car.  He responded that he had simply moved bulbs around his car to test them...something I explained carefully to him is not a viable method of testing an led bulb correctly.  I again explained that this did not test the bulb itself and that I needed him to test the bulb outside of the vehicle application.   To date, I have not received answers to all of my questions.

Until I have all the information I need from Scott, it is impossible for me to authorize a second exchange of the exact same bulb I had already replaced.  If it is actually bad, then it is throwing good money after bad unless the reason for the repeated failures is tracked down and corrected.  In addition, I am not even convinced that the bulb actually IS bad.  The only way to know that is for it to be tested outside of the car using the methods I have provided him on three separate occasions. If a second bulb has failed in that same circuit, then most likely, it is as simple as installing a $1.99 led protector on that single circuit of the car.  

We absolutely do stand behind our products and have answered each and every email sent by Scott to us.  Cooperation though is a two way street.  For me to help him, he has to help us by answering the questions I have asked of him, and particularly by testing the bulb outside of the vehicle as described.

Thank you