Lights of America has just been fined $21 million for lying. Serves them right. I only wish more of the liars were being slapped this way.
As we reported last fall, in 2010 the Federal Trade Commission brought an action against Lights of America, and against Usman Vakil and Farooq Vakil, for "deceptive business practices related to their marketing and sales of light bulbs that use light-emitting diodes." (Here is the FTC case file.) The specific complaints were that they made false claims about their bulbs being replacements for specific incandescent bulbs, and that they made false claims about the lifetime of their bulbs. The FTC didn't mince words either: They specifically refer to Lights of America as having reaped "ill-gotten gains."
That's not enough? The court found that "(1) it is reasonably likely that Defendants will commit the kinds of deceptive practices at issue in this case in the future; (2) Defendants acted with sufficient deliberateness; (3) Defendants have had prior experience with false claims; and (4) Defendants are in a position to repeat their deceptive acts with other lighting products they sell." In short, they've been lying in the past, and it's likely that they're going to be lying again in the future.
Now this all comes as no surprise, at least to those of us who actually measure performance of LED light bulbs. Some years back, Carol and I did a survey of all the then-available LED bulbs. Almost all of them over-stated their light output compared with our NIST-referenced light measurement system. Presumably the situation is a lot better now, but I still see labels reading "replacement for a 60W bulb" on bulbs that don't seem to meet that description at all.
Terminology
So does "replacement for" mean only "produces the same number of lumens"? Is there no implication that the color rendition or angular distribution of light is the same as an incandescent? (By the way, I have seen incandescents playing fast and loose. Here is a GE incandescent bulb claiming to be a replacement for a 60W bulb, but the fine print notes that although it consumes only 43W, it has "nearly the same brightness."
My opinion is that if a replacement bulb is going to say "60W replacement," then it ought not only to generate the same 830 lumens, but it should also have the same color rendition (note that I didn't just say CRI) and the same light distribution as an incandescent -- and it ought to dim the same way, too.
I can hear the objections: "Oh, that's too hard! We don't need to be that fancy to be a replacement! No bulb would be able to be called a replacement." That's right. Almost none of the bulbs now on the market ought to be claiming they're replacements for incandescents.
So how come the FTC doesn't go after all those other liars? Part of it, of course, is that they have limited resources, so they go after the big guys. Lights of America has $116 million in revenue, so a $21 million fine definitely hurts. They sell at both Walmart and Home Depot -- I hope both of them stop carrying Lights of America products.
Plan to get big? Better make sure your facts are right. Because lying about it can really hurt.
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