Color LED Pool Bulb's - Why do the prices vary so much?

July 26, 2018

One of the most common questions we get from customers is the price discrepancy that many of you may find while doing research on purchasing a color LED bulb for your swimming pool or spa.  Because we design, manufacture, market and distribute these types of bulbs we have very good insight into why the prices vary so much.  Obviously we would like you to buy our bulbs, but this blog is not a hard sell but hopefully rather an honest assessment from my perspective.

There are three primary ways most consumers use to investigate upgrading their pool lights to color LED.

1. The most common is to simply ask the person who maintains or repairs your pool on a regular basis.  This could be the person who comes out weekly to clean you pool and add chemicals.  Or if you do that yourself, the person who repairs major items like plumbing, pumps, heaters or filters.
2. You go to your local pool store to see what they offer.  That may be a large chain or a smaller regional company.
3. On-Line - this is becoming more and more popular.  There is the giant Amazon and other smaller companies like us that only sell factory direct.

Scenario 1

Depending on your local person, they may either not know you can convert your existing light to color led, or they are incented to sell you an entire new fixture costing $600 or more.  They may or may not even know that you can just replace a bulb.  But regardless of the above, they will see $$$ when you mention you want to upgrade.  So be careful going that route as you will be lucky to get a LED light installed for under $1000

Scenario 2

Larger pool chains will have bulbs but they will cost over $200.  Smaller chains may not even have them at all.  There is really only one company that has gotten significant penetration within the retail chain.  I am not going to mention their name, but if you went to a store you already saw their bulbs and the price may give you a "Splash" of reality to the cost.  It costs a lot of money to have sales people to go to all the different pool store chains that must be covered in the bulb price.  You aren't paying for a better bulb, you are paying for expensive overhead and multiple mouths to feed when each bulb is sold.

Scenario 3

The cheapest bulbs are always found on the largest ecommerce website.  And if you look closely they likely only guarantee returns or refunds for 60 days.  They may claim to offer 1 year warranties, but if you actually try and get one its close to impossible.  There are some good pool bulbs found there, but none of them are the cheap bulbs.  In order to sell a cheap bulb on that website, you have to quite literally cut costs for every component in a bulb.  Most bulbs have at least 30 discrete parts that go into them, from computer chips, pcb boards, led's, housings, etc.  There are 30 parts that can be found cheaper somewhere.  And to be the low cost provider, you cheap out on every one of those 30 parts.  Another words you pay for what you get.  Most never last more than one pool season.

We don't cheap out on parts and offer a real 1 year warranty.  We also actually answer the phone if you have any questions or concerns.

We engineer our bulbs to last 5-10 years.  Most bulbs last until the seal fails on your light and the boards inside get wet.  We hope you found this valuable and take a look at our selection.

Thanks

https://www.florida-sunseeker.com/collections/led-bulbs-1

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