At the end of May I bought an "OEM Equivalent" Sharp AN100LP bulb from Electrified Discounters ("ED") for $260 (came with a 60 day ED warranty) and a Mack 3yr/2 bulb extended warranty for another $170. The transaction turned out to be a nightmare, with the bulb lasting around 150 hours and Electrified Discounters giving me awful service and refusing to stand behind their product. I want to let people know what I experienced to help them make a bit more informed decision about whether to do business with Electrified Discounters. I wrote a review of the business on epinions.com and here are some excerpts from that review:
I placed my order on a Tuesday and paid extra for it to be shipped UPS 3-day so I could have it before the weekend and be able to watch movies on my projector over the weekend. ED did not ship the package in a timely fashion and it did not get there until the following week – it would have arrived on the same day if I had shipped it the cheapest way possible, by UPS Ground. However, not only did ED delay the shipping, but they also overcharged on the insurance. They charged extra for insurance on the extended warranty, which is an intangible item that cannot be “lost” or “damaged.” Although I complained to them about the extra insurance, they told me that they had to charge extra since they included the extended warranty card in the package. I felt this was really dishonest because if the package got lost, they could simply call Mack and get a new card – the card is simply a record of the warranty, not the warranty itself. For a 6”x6”x6” box that weighed about a pound, even considering the expedited shipping method, it should not have cost me over $21 for shipping 1/3 of the way across the country.
My bulb, when it worked, appeared to give roughly equivalent brightness, color and contrast as my original factory bulb, but sometimes it would not light up on the first attempt and I would have to restart the projector after a few minutes. Nine weeks after I bought it (i.e. one week after the 60 day ED warranty expired), the bulb stopped working one day and blew. I probably had around 150 hours on it, less than 10% of its minimum expected lifespan.
As I subsequently learned from both manufacturer tech support and several online A/V websites, non-OEM bulbs often have poor-quality Chinese lamps in them that do not last. Nine weeks and 150 hours of life before dying is not the “equivalent” of a factory bulb, it is a disgraceful and defective product, nothing more than junk.
I called customer service to complain about the defective bulb and see what they would do for me. The first CSR with whom I spoke said they would only consider their product defective if it died within the warranty period and wouldn’t do anything for me since it had died a week after the warranty expired. She snidely told me just to use my extended warranty. I tried to ask why they wouldn’t stand behind their product when it lasted less than 10% of its intended life but the CSR rudely hung up on me.
I called back and demanded to talk to a customer service manager. I got put through to a manager’s voicemail and left a message describing the problem, describing the rude CSR who hung up on me and left my number with a request that she call me back as soon as possible. No one ever called me back.
A week later I called back and finally spoke to Ivy Hadden, who described herself as the CS manager at ED. I complained about the fact that I had left a message a week earlier and no manager had called me back – she mumbled “Oh, I was going to call you but I was just really busy.” Sure you were, Ivy, I believe you like I believe Iranian politicians discussing the state of their country’s nuclear program. I explained about the defective product and she cheerfully said “That’s what extended warranties are for!” I told her that no one spends $260 expecting that they will receive a product that lasts less than 10% the time it should and that they should stand behind their product. Ivy told me (verbatim) “Well, if you didn’t have the extended warranty, maybe we could do something about this, but since you have the warranty, you’ll have to get a new bulb from Mack.” I demanded to know why they would stand behind their product if I hadn’t bought the warranty but since I had, they would not – why shouldn’t they do right by their customer in both situations? Suddenly, Ivy did a 180 degree reverse and denied she had ever said they would treat my complaints differently since I had bought the extended warranty. This was a blatant lie – she had just told me the opposite. I tried to tell her that I should not have to use up one of my two bulbs under the extended warranty less than 10 days into the start of my three-year extended warranty. I asked what she would call a product that was supposed to last over 2,000 hours but lasted only 150 hours, but she flat-out refused to answer that question and refused to stand behind their $260 bulb.
This was one of the worst transactions I’ve had over hundreds of mail order and online purchases in the past several decades. While the price was good, they delayed on shipping and overcharged me for insurance, giving me a bogus and nonsensical excuse for why they did so. The product turned out to be defective junk, something that lasted a tiny fraction of its expected lifespan. Customer service was virtually non-existent, did not return my call, was rude, and lied to me. Electrified Discounters was completely unwilling to stand behind its product or do anything to make me a satisfied customer or ensure I would give them another chance on future purchases.
Yes, there are plenty of positive reviews from customers who didn’t have a problem with their purchase, but the hallmark of a good business is not how they can make many of their customers satisfied simply by doing the bare minimum one expects (advertise good price, take money, ship correct product) but how they handle a transaction that is less than perfect. Electrified Discounters clearly doesn’t give a damn about their customers. Read some more of the negative reviews for this business and you’ll see that they are indifferent to advertising truthfully on their website and won’t take responsibility for inaccurate advertising. You’ll see that they sell gray-market goods without telling you that they do not come with a U.S. warranty. You’ll also see that they will refuse to issue refunds if they’ve shipped a defective product to their customer.
A final thought on ED is that they have over 450 reviews on epinions.com and a very high percentage of them are cookie-cutter, brief but exceedingly positive reviews that all look about the same and are all written by people who apparently joined epinions.com for the sole purpose of posting a 5/5 rated review of Electrified Discounters. I suspect shill reviews.
I placed my order on a Tuesday and paid extra for it to be shipped UPS 3-day so I could have it before the weekend and be able to watch movies on my projector over the weekend. ED did not ship the package in a timely fashion and it did not get there until the following week – it would have arrived on the same day if I had shipped it the cheapest way possible, by UPS Ground. However, not only did ED delay the shipping, but they also overcharged on the insurance. They charged extra for insurance on the extended warranty, which is an intangible item that cannot be “lost” or “damaged.” Although I complained to them about the extra insurance, they told me that they had to charge extra since they included the extended warranty card in the package. I felt this was really dishonest because if the package got lost, they could simply call Mack and get a new card – the card is simply a record of the warranty, not the warranty itself. For a 6”x6”x6” box that weighed about a pound, even considering the expedited shipping method, it should not have cost me over $21 for shipping 1/3 of the way across the country.
My bulb, when it worked, appeared to give roughly equivalent brightness, color and contrast as my original factory bulb, but sometimes it would not light up on the first attempt and I would have to restart the projector after a few minutes. Nine weeks after I bought it (i.e. one week after the 60 day ED warranty expired), the bulb stopped working one day and blew. I probably had around 150 hours on it, less than 10% of its minimum expected lifespan.
As I subsequently learned from both manufacturer tech support and several online A/V websites, non-OEM bulbs often have poor-quality Chinese lamps in them that do not last. Nine weeks and 150 hours of life before dying is not the “equivalent” of a factory bulb, it is a disgraceful and defective product, nothing more than junk.
I called customer service to complain about the defective bulb and see what they would do for me. The first CSR with whom I spoke said they would only consider their product defective if it died within the warranty period and wouldn’t do anything for me since it had died a week after the warranty expired. She snidely told me just to use my extended warranty. I tried to ask why they wouldn’t stand behind their product when it lasted less than 10% of its intended life but the CSR rudely hung up on me.
I called back and demanded to talk to a customer service manager. I got put through to a manager’s voicemail and left a message describing the problem, describing the rude CSR who hung up on me and left my number with a request that she call me back as soon as possible. No one ever called me back.
A week later I called back and finally spoke to Ivy Hadden, who described herself as the CS manager at ED. I complained about the fact that I had left a message a week earlier and no manager had called me back – she mumbled “Oh, I was going to call you but I was just really busy.” Sure you were, Ivy, I believe you like I believe Iranian politicians discussing the state of their country’s nuclear program. I explained about the defective product and she cheerfully said “That’s what extended warranties are for!” I told her that no one spends $260 expecting that they will receive a product that lasts less than 10% the time it should and that they should stand behind their product. Ivy told me (verbatim) “Well, if you didn’t have the extended warranty, maybe we could do something about this, but since you have the warranty, you’ll have to get a new bulb from Mack.” I demanded to know why they would stand behind their product if I hadn’t bought the warranty but since I had, they would not – why shouldn’t they do right by their customer in both situations? Suddenly, Ivy did a 180 degree reverse and denied she had ever said they would treat my complaints differently since I had bought the extended warranty. This was a blatant lie – she had just told me the opposite. I tried to tell her that I should not have to use up one of my two bulbs under the extended warranty less than 10 days into the start of my three-year extended warranty. I asked what she would call a product that was supposed to last over 2,000 hours but lasted only 150 hours, but she flat-out refused to answer that question and refused to stand behind their $260 bulb.
This was one of the worst transactions I’ve had over hundreds of mail order and online purchases in the past several decades. While the price was good, they delayed on shipping and overcharged me for insurance, giving me a bogus and nonsensical excuse for why they did so. The product turned out to be defective junk, something that lasted a tiny fraction of its expected lifespan. Customer service was virtually non-existent, did not return my call, was rude, and lied to me. Electrified Discounters was completely unwilling to stand behind its product or do anything to make me a satisfied customer or ensure I would give them another chance on future purchases.
Yes, there are plenty of positive reviews from customers who didn’t have a problem with their purchase, but the hallmark of a good business is not how they can make many of their customers satisfied simply by doing the bare minimum one expects (advertise good price, take money, ship correct product) but how they handle a transaction that is less than perfect. Electrified Discounters clearly doesn’t give a damn about their customers. Read some more of the negative reviews for this business and you’ll see that they are indifferent to advertising truthfully on their website and won’t take responsibility for inaccurate advertising. You’ll see that they sell gray-market goods without telling you that they do not come with a U.S. warranty. You’ll also see that they will refuse to issue refunds if they’ve shipped a defective product to their customer.
A final thought on ED is that they have over 450 reviews on epinions.com and a very high percentage of them are cookie-cutter, brief but exceedingly positive reviews that all look about the same and are all written by people who apparently joined epinions.com for the sole purpose of posting a 5/5 rated review of Electrified Discounters. I suspect shill reviews.
