Re: Insteon now or wait?

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert L Bass" <robertlbass@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

<stuff snipped>

> I know that flickering can cause premature burnout but I have not heard of
> it causing a bulb to blow though it may indeed be possible.

The point that's important is that it's possible, especially with a new,
largely untested design to have more than the one defect that we seem to all
agree on, flickering.  Or that it's possible that continued filament
flickering might cause some up until now unknown physical failure in the
bulb.

Any search on "light bulb injuries" brings you to famous cases.

A bad switch doesn't have to make a light bulb explode in order to help kill
you. Premature bulb failure can lead to other consequential damage.  Some
poor kid showed how even a defect that only causes light bulbs to burn out
prematurely can have fatal consequences:

www.cdc.gov/niosh/face/stateface/ia/95IA021.html -

"Youth falls from ladder and dies while changing light bulb. He received
massive head injuries and died enroute to the hospital."

As a vendor, I suspect you'd rather not sell products that have to be
returned for any reason, right?  Smarthome should have suspended sales until
they fixed the current problem for the sake of all the other businessmen
involved with them as installers or vendors.  Every time you change a light
bulb, there is a definite, non-zero risk you may be electrocuted, killed by
falling from a ladder or injured by broken glass.  Every time.  If defective
switches cause a substantial reduction in the light bulb changing interval,
they have increased that risk of injury.

When Smarthome became aware of the problem, they should have taken the
remaining inventory and let it out as beta test equipment to search out any
other defects they might have missed.  Instead, they sold it without
informing purchasers they had discovered a substantial defect.  They let
poor end users do the beta testing for them.  What benefit did those buyers
between March and July earn as their reward?  Apparently only the right to
own bad switches they paid full freight for and would have to pay more money
to exchange.  That's dirty pool in my book.

They made a serious error and they are *still* letting it careen out of
control.  That's going to be bad for Insteon for a long time to come.
Product liability is a different animal in the era of the Internet and lots
of companies still haven't gotten the 411.  They owe anyone who purchased a
defective switch between March and July more than just a bloody refund.

They deceived their customers deliberately to enhance their sales and market
position.  Now they need to pay the full freight for making them whole.  If
that means paying electricians to yank those switches and install something
else, well, that's what happens when you scrimp on your beta testing and you
sell items that you know to have a material defect without disclosing said
defect.

They didn't give customers a chance to decide to wait until they fixed the
problem.  More importantly, they had every reason to believe customers could
and would incur considerable expense installing and removing those switches
that they knew were defective.

--
Bobby G.