IKEA CFL bulb failed

Why would you pay £4 for something that costs a quid everywhere else?

Hardly worth making a phone call for - and even if they offer you a refund, you'd need to go down there, wasting petrol to pick it up.

A quick google doesn't reveal a mythical £1 variant ... and I'd be going past the IKEA anyway tomorrow.

I was more curious as to whether a 22 month life - especially when lightly used - was acceptable, given the 10,000 hr claim.

I am old enough to remember when the selling point of CFLs was not the energy consumption, but the lifespan - IIRC they were called "long life bulbs" when Tomorrows World demoed them ...

that is 8000 hrs give or take..if it was on ALL the time.

A CFL, lightly used? You're havin' a larf ;)

Cheap CFL's are not claimed to be long life, just low energy and likely slow start. Long life costs more. Rusty

It's all relative and you're not saying what you are comparing the cheap ones to. GLS lightbuls were often quoted as having an average life of only 1000 hours, I should think any CFL could beat that.

The industry no longer seems to quote life expectancy in those terms, now it's often x years for a daily use of y hours.

Yes. Their customer service is generally very good, so they will probably just send you a gift card refund.

Depends which way they're mounted too. Base down keeps the electronics cool, base up it cooks.

Rusty

No they would no doubt send him a carton of em to keep him sweet. Brian

Depends.

I only got an acceptable response to a complaint about some expensive furniture after I emailed the President of IKEA in Sweden! They didn't admit he had kicked their backsides and would only say that their supervisor had asked them to call me.

Also the CFLs in the three lanterns I have outside last far longer than the ones I use indoors.

I think you'll find in the small print how many hours assumed per day (and it's usually rather low).

IME, failure of the electronics is relatively rare (perhaps 5% of CFLs I change). Some higher powered ones (>25W) do specify cap-up may shorten life. Enclosed fittings have a similar effect in any orientation.

Some 12 year old 20W IKEA ones have lasted very well in enclosed bathroom fittings. I think the first died at 10 years old, and I managed to swap just the tube part from an identical one with the wrong lamp base, so it's a cut-n-shut, part 2 years old, part

IKEA do have some good value LED retrofits, although they are not super high output ones.

I currently buy Feit CFLs from Costco. Their 23W ones have superb light output (real 100W equiv - could even be more than a 240V

Actually, I stock up on the Feit ones, as Costco go out of stock and it takes months to get new stock. Feit are US-based (where they are known much better than here), and I presume Costco get a special bulk load of 240V ones made up for shipment to the UK.

How do you know what the cause of a failure is?

Sometimes by the way they fail, other times by taking them apart.

I have in the past reused the electronics from failed CFLs to drive regular small fluorescent lamps, so clearly the electronics hasn't failed. Tube failure is usually accompanied by blackened tube ends, and sometimes one filament going open-circuit if the control gear provides enough extra voltage to drive it as a cold cathode tube for a short time after all the emission coating is spluttered off. Occasionally, this extra voltage output (and power consumption) will blow the electronics too - had that just recently with a very old Philips one where the tube went into cold cathode mode, followed shortly afterwards by a catastrophic failure of the control gear which left everything inside covered in condensed vaporised copper and tripped the circuit breaker. However, that's rare.