Problems with Dr. LED Lights

[dpollitt]

Has anyone had problems with Dr Led lights?

I bought directly from Dr Led and out of about 4 lights two have failed. Water entered one directly between the two panels of the glass casing and the other simply failed...one, a starboard navigation light and the other an anchor light.

I have asked Dr Led to stand by his product and the best I can get is 1/2 off of one replacement which to me is unacceptable. I am out of warranty but not by much.


Is there any other company that has good LED lights? In the future if I had to buy Dr. LED lights I will buy through West Marine as they stand behind what they sell....in an exemplary manner.

Would be interested in any experiences on this subject.

david pollitt

[Christian Van H]

Not good, and I hate hearing stuff like this. One question though...how is water entering your lamp housings? Most are at least highly water repellent...

[dpollitt]

Good question.....obviously some water entered the housing...its a good well known make aqua signal......the lamp housing and electrics are fine...the bulb basically came apart. The other is at the top of the mast and clean and dry.....but failed. When I bought the boat it had regular bulbs that were just fine in identical positions.

I am in Colombia and about to cross the Pacific so needed some help in getting these replaced......

thanks for your thoughts
david

[Lost Horizons]

Uh-oh... I just replaced my anchor light Aqua Signal bulb with Dr. LED last month.

[Maine Sail]

You're not the only one with failures. There are a bunch of reports similar to yours. One guy on SBO forums, Bob, had two bubs fail in less than a year both with water in them. He's posted pictures of the failures over there.. Another guy had the LED's burn out on a bunch of interior lights. Dr. LED has not stood behind these failures well at all..

[DaveOnCudjoe]

I have converted both my boats to Dr LED in Aqua Signal enclosures. The Sea Pearl 3 yrs ago and the F-31 2 yrs ago. So far so good. Dave

[senormechanico]

I saw a big bunch of Dr LED packages in the clearance bin at Fisheries Supply a few months ago. $7 apiece.

Buyer beware.

[dpollitt]

Thanks to all for responding....need to be very careful with buying these bulbs at $50. West Marine needs to know about these failures.

david

[ka4wja]

David, et al,

While, I've had Sensi-Bulbs in all my interior reading lights now for years, and have both an OGM LED Tri-Color / Anchor light combo at the masthead, and OGM LED port/starboard pullpit mounted Nav Lights.....
I also have had Dr. LED interior lights (not their Nav light inserts).....

And, DR. LED has suffered from two major problems:
1) Lack of LED quality control...
2) Lack of customer support....

Two things here to note.....
A) My personal bad experiences with Dr. LED lights....and
B) Many posts on the SSCA disc, boards parelleling the troubles that both David, and I, have had....

My personal experience with DR. LED lights are with interior 16-LED-cluster MR16 replacements....
I bought a half-dozen of these in 2007, and within a few weeks, 2 of them had failed almost completely (only 2-3 of the 16 LED's were still working), those 2 units went into a dumpster in Gibraltar.....
Within the next few weeks, another two units had failed in the same way....and over the next few weeks the remaining ones failed as well...
(I did not have any large voltage flucuations....just you typical 12.5v in the morning to 14.4v in afternoon, from solar charging...)

Multiple e-mails to Dr. LED went unanswered....BUT, since I'd purchased them thru a dealer (Hotwire Enterprizes), I contacted them....
John and Libby, said to send the remaining bad units to them, and they'd send them off to Dr. LED for replacement / refund....
I did this upon arriving back in the US, and I requested a refund....
And within the month, I had my credit card account credited in full (just for the units that I returned, since I had trash-canned the first couple that failed...)

While I have NO use at all for Dr. LED light, and have found their lack of customer support to be unfortunately about on par with most businesses these days.....totally useless......
I cannot say enough good things about John and Libby at Hotwire!!! They are tuly nice people, and recommend them highly.....


Do a search on the SSCA disc boards, and you'll find some more data from those that have had these (and other) troubles.....

Please be aware that not everyone has had troubles with these lights.....
It appears the lack of QC, combined with the emphasis on "low prices", along with lack of customer support, adds up to troubles for many using Dr. LED lights.....


I hope this helps...

John

[dpollitt]

Yes I couldnt agree more.....only one thing I disagree with.....you intimate that they are not expensive.....$50 dollars a bulb seems expensive to me.

Many thanks again
david

[Sailmonkey]

I just bought several different styles of led bulbs from superbrightleds.com. in total I spent $60. I'll keep everyone posted on their performance. Of course these aern't for the nav lights but still the cheapest incandescant bulb replacements I've found. And some of the bulbs I got look strangely familar to the sensibulb!!

[Bash]

I've had a Dr. LED fail after three years of use. The claim that these bulbs will last many times longer than incandescents should include the phrase: "if you're lucky."

[sded]

I just had my second of these POS fail (out of four). First one, half of the LEDs on the white section failed completely. Replaced it with a sensibulb with a dimmer on both red and white; still going strong. Second one all of the LEDs got dim together. Replaced it with a second dual sensibulb (as soon as it arrives) from Sailors Solutions LED lighting, soundproof, Sailor's Solutions Inc. . First failure, Dr Led offered to replace it with their "new and improved" at a slight discount. This time I didn't bother-too many problems to keep dealing with them. NEVER AGAIN, DR LED!. BTW, my local chandlery is also unhappy with all the failures their customers get; I bought mine directly from Dr Led.

[mikeandrebecca]

Thanks for these posts guys. I was pretty close to buying a couple of these last weekend. Glad I didn't! I guess I'll look for alternative manufacturers.

Mike

[slowshoes]

I'm also in the market for a led replacement bulbs that are bright and have a warm light to them, not the cooler blue type light that many seem to have. Any suggestions would be appreciated.