[jambutty]

Originally Posted by shillelagh

For all you that pay their bills to British Gas they've been advertising that all their customers are going to get 4 free energy saving bulbs from them. Well today came home from work and my free bulbs were on the doorstep. 2 60watt and 2 40 watt ones. Now i dont use 60watt bulbs or 40 watt bulbs but i do still have 9 100 watt energy saving ones from when mum was alive on the warmfront scheme. I have replaced the ones i use most with the energy saving ones and still have the other 9 up on top of the kitchen cupboard waiting for use... which will probably last me for the rest of my life!!! What a waste of money though sending me 4 bulbs - if they had contacted me i would have said i dont need them especially as they are 60 and 40 watt ones - i dont have any lamps!!!! I think i would prefer to have the money they spent on my bulbs knocked off my bill.

Don’t kid yourself, the bulbs are not free. BG customers paid for them in the recent price increases.

This is just a ruse to mitigate those recent price rises and those yet to come later this year.

I wonder how much energy is used to make an energy saving bulb, compared to a normal hot filament bulb? Then there are the costs and energy to dispose of them. You can’t just chuck them on a tip. Not when they contain mercury you can’t.

I wonder what the profit margin is on an energy saving bulb. If these bulbs sell at say £10 each the profit margin is likely to be at least £2.50. Traditional bulbs sell at no more than £1 each and their profit margin is going to be about 25p. Who’s conning whom?

Motability sent me two the other day. Megaman Compact 2000 rated at 11w with a claimed life of 10,000 hours. The blurp that came with them reads:
“The enclosed bulbs last up to 6 times longer than a traditional light bulb and could save you up to £28 per year in electricity costs – that’s nearly £190 over their lifetime.”

It is supposed to be the equivalent of a normal hot filament 60w bulb. But it ain’t. This energy saving bulb is rated at 650 lumens. A normal 60w bulb is rated at 700 lumens. Thus it is not quite as bright.

You might think that the difference is hardly noticeable but I can notice the difference.

When you consider that a TV gobbles up electricity as if it is going out of fashion and most houses will have a TV on for several hours per day, changing to low energy bulbs isn’t going to make that much of an energy saving.

Just think – how many hours in a day do you have a light on somewhere?