Feit Electric LED bulbs... shitty or do I have an electrical problem

[chaka]

We burn through Feit brand LED bulbs (the ones sold at Costco) at a much much MUCH higher rate than the "15,000 life hours" marketing bs on the box. Mostly the 60w replacement dimmable soft whites, but also some floods. We're anal about turning off lights when not in the room. These are getting a couple hundred hours I'm guessing at most before burning out. Anyone else have bad experience with these? Is this just normal for LEDs in general? Or do I have a weird electrical problem? thanks

[TexasGortex]

That seems very odd. In ~10 years of all LED use I think I’ve burned through 2-3 (likely due to a humid bathroom environment). I have a mixture of brands. If I recall correctly Feit and Philips have been reliable but the premature life ones Cree.

I’d suspect choosing the appropriate bulb (water/outdoor safe, making sure your dimmer is compatible) is the ticket outside of the odd bad batch. Your experience is definitely abnormal in my opinion.

[XXX-er]

check for loose fixtures/ bad grounds, I've had a fixture with a bad ground eat bulbs

[singlesline]

Sounds like bad batch or weird electrical problem to me. You said dimmable--are you using dimmers? Are they old dimmers from well before LEDs were a thing?

I'm pretty much all CREE and Feit, including what are likely the same costco regular and floods.. I've had occasional bulb failures over the years, but I think all of the current costco bulbs used indoors in normal rooms are still working (and would have been purchased maybe 18 months ago after I moved in here).

That said, there's a bit of a dirty trick in the lifespan. The bulb has a very long lifespan in normal use, but I get the feeling they exclude defects from that and that defect rates are much higher on LEDs than they are on CFLs and incandescent. So a "good" bulb may last you many years before it fades and gets too dim, but a "bad" bulb will just stop working in 6 months.

The good companies offer very long warranties to counteract this, but claims can be a PITA depending on where you bought them. I've brought cree bulbs back to Home Depot and they just swapped them out easy, but they sell smaller quantities (and I may have waited until I had 2 or 4 and threw them back in a bulb box). No idea how Costco would handle returning 1-2 failed bulbs out of a 12 pack. Shipping them back to Feit isn't a good solution, but neither is pulling out 12 bulbs and taking them all back to Costco when only a couple are bad.

[rideit]

FWIW, I have started dating my light bulbs with a sharpie. Have only had one warranty request at Ace, and the boss just said “good enough for me, even if you just wrote that this morning!”

[motopsycha]

Similar to the original poster, LED bulbs in my house don’t seem to hold up anywhere close to their promises. It doesn’t matter the brand or what fixture they are in, I have many that don’t make it through the second year


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[chaka]

thanks everyone for weighing in

Sounds like bad batch or weird electrical problem to me. You said dimmable--are you using dimmers? Are they old dimmers from well before LEDs were a thing?

I think this may be it, based on some additional interwebbing. House was built in 2006, which was well before LEDs were commonplace, so I'm thinking the dimmer switches may be incompatible.
Are Your LED Light Bulbs Failing Prematurely? Here Are Some Common Causes and Their Solutions - Working With Electricians (ecomtechnovation.com)

From the article:
The older triac-style dimmer switches common in homes are not compatible with LED light bulbs. These dimmers work by reducing the amount of power provided to the fixture by rapidly switching on and off. This is all accomplished inside of a single AC cycle, so it doesn't cause your lights to flicker on and off—it simply provides an overall lower amount of power to the light bulb, causing it to shine less brightly.
LED light bulbs draw so little power compared to other types of light bulbs that triac-style dimmer switches have difficulty determining when to switch on and when to switch off. The power supplied to the light bulb becomes very uneven, which rapidly causes damage to the electronics inside. If you want to use an LED light bulb with dimmer switches, you need both an LED light bulb that supports dimmer switches and dimmer switches that support LED light bulbs. Any other combination will cause your light bulbs to burn out very quickly. You can purchase LED light bulbs that are dimmer-capable from a hardware store, and a home electrical repair service can quickly and inexpensively upgrade all of the dimmer switches in your home to LED-capable dimmer switches.

[Nobody Famous]

Feit's website has a dimmer comparability chart that gets updated every so often.

https://www.feit.com/dimmer_compatibility/

Also, Lutron and Leviton, makers of popular in wall dimmer switches, used to list compatability on their websites. "Used to" means I haven't looked in many years and I read it was getting too much work to keep the lists updated.

Lutron and Leviton will list specifications on their dimmer packaging and somewhere on their websites.

[hafjell]

Same problems. Older construction. Dimmer switches. House eats light bulbs, LED or standard. Wish life were easier.

[PNWbrit]

check for loose fixtures/ bad grounds, I've had a fixture with a bad ground eat bulbs

Bad ground?

No.

[SirVicSmasher]

If you can't fix it with a hammer you have an electrical problem

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[jmedslc]

Same problems. Older construction. Dimmer switches. House eats light bulbs, LED or standard. Wish life were easier.

me too. newer dimmers haven't really made a difference. IME, these Feit bulbs do not last anywhere near the hours in the specs.

[chaka]

If you can't fix it with a hammer you have an electrical problem

QFT

[lake_effect]

Not bad grounds, ground wire may or may not have been connected but all it does is ground the metal frame of the fixture. Neutral makes connection to the lamp through the threaded insert, hot makes connection through the brass tab in the base of the lamp holder. Grounds just ground anything that could become energized if things go to shit so it shorts out and trips a breaker instead of hurting someone.

In my professional opinion Feit leds are fucking garbage. Typically if I provide lamps for a customer or for my own use I use Sylvania. Still relatively inexpensive and I have had really goos luck with them.

As others have mentioned could also be old incandescent style dimmers. Could also be poor neutral connections but if that were the case you would see them getting dimmer or brighter.



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[XXX-er]

i asked an electrician bud and he told me to check the ground of the fixture blowing bulbs and so I found the metal box did have an intermittent poor ground to the fixture and the tennant was using shitty incandescent bulbs and now its fixed

Duno if power quality could have anything to do with blowing bulbs but i had computer system boards blowing in small towns but not in the big town with more stable power and so the only thing I can think was fluctuating power/ power that went out all the time was blowing power capacitors ?

[chaka]

Not bad grounds, ground wire may or may not have been connected but all it does is ground the metal frame of the fixture. Neutral makes connection to the lamp through the threaded insert, hot makes connection through the brass tab in the base of the lamp holder. Grounds just ground anything that could become energized if things go to shit so it shorts out and trips a breaker instead of hurting someone.

In my professional opinion Feit leds are fucking garbage. Typically if I provide lamps for a customer or for my own use I use Sylvania. Still relatively inexpensive and I have had really goos luck with them.

As others have mentioned could also be old incandescent style dimmers. Could also be poor neutral connections but if that were the case you would see them getting dimmer or brighter.



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thanks. After further investigation I realized that of the four or five fixtures where we are seeing Feit bulbs fail really early, none are on dimmer switches. The failure mode is usually random dimming and blinking for a little bit then dead. Does that sound more like shitty bulbs or poor neutral connections? Odd it would be poor connections on several fixtures? Regardles, we will heed your advice and spend a bit more on sylvania moving forward.
thanks!

[Shorty_J]

Bad ground?

No.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

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[PNWbrit]

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Maybe ground works differently in Canada?

[XXX-er]

You are telling me i didnt have a bad ground blowing bulbs and you could tell this thru the computer screen ?

[PNWbrit]

Yes.

[XXX-er]

well i fixed the bad ground and it no longer blows bulbs

[PNWbrit]

the correct answer has already been given to you.

Not bad grounds, ground wire may or may not have been connected but all it does is ground the metal frame of the fixture. Neutral makes connection to the lamp through the threaded insert, hot makes connection through the brass tab in the base of the lamp holder. Grounds just ground anything that could become energized if things go to shit so it shorts out and trips a breaker instead of hurting someone.

The light bulb will work without any ground at all.

Where do you think the ground wire connects to a lightbulb that it being "bad" could stop it from working or cause them to blow frequently?

[XXX-er]

the correct answer has already been given to you.



The light bulb will work without any ground at all.

Where do you think the ground wire connects to a lightbulb that it being "bad" could stop it from working or cause them to blow frequently?

yeah i know how that works

The metal box junction box was not properly connected to ground, it worked but it blew bulbs

[lake_effect]

You are telling me i didnt have a bad ground blowing bulbs and you could tell this thru the computer screen ?

I'm just telling you a ground wire in a fixture has no bearing on lamp operation. Bad neutral, then yes, but a ground never contacts the lamp. Electricity flows out on a hot, back on the neutral, hence why most plug in lamps have a 2 wire plug. As stated earlier a ground is there to protect people and equipment.

Maybe if you never had a ground connection at your main service or grounds tied to neutrals downstream from the main bonding jumper. What exactly did you fix to alleviate your "bad ground" issue?

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[XXX-er]

the correct answer has already been given to you.



The light bulb will work without any ground at all.

Where do you think the ground wire connects to a lightbulb that it being "bad" could stop it from working or cause them to blow frequently?

metal box not properly connected to ground