BobCajun
Well-Known Member
I mentioned in other posts that one of my Cree COB drivers burnt out after a couple years. Well, looking at the two drivers I have, I noticed that the burnt one has a stickon label whereas the good one has the label printed right on the metal casing. I recalled that somebody posted about a driver that had the output misprinted, and it was a stickon label. So putting 2 and 2 together, I conclude that one of my drivers is a knockoff, hence the early burnout. It was part of an expensive COB high bay unit, way overpriced but at the time there was little else available without ordering outside the country.
Now when something is that costly, what are the odds that somebody somewhere in the chain got the bright idea to substitute cheap knockoff drivers in some of the units? Seems unlikely that Cree would make the same driver, one with printed on label and one with stickon label. So the moral of the story is to check all drivers and if there's a stickon label be very suspicious. I don't think any quality companies would use stickon driver labels. Aside from it being stuck on, the labelling is identical to the printed on ones. No typos in these ones. If the scammers ever bother to print the labels on properly they'll be undetectable as knockoffs, until they burn out about 5 years before the real ones.
Now when something is that costly, what are the odds that somebody somewhere in the chain got the bright idea to substitute cheap knockoff drivers in some of the units? Seems unlikely that Cree would make the same driver, one with printed on label and one with stickon label. So the moral of the story is to check all drivers and if there's a stickon label be very suspicious. I don't think any quality companies would use stickon driver labels. Aside from it being stuck on, the labelling is identical to the printed on ones. No typos in these ones. If the scammers ever bother to print the labels on properly they'll be undetectable as knockoffs, until they burn out about 5 years before the real ones.