Scam alert: LED Lamps with Counterfeit UL Marks May be Hazardous

Safety consulting and certifying company UL (Underwriters Laboratories) is warning of some LED lamps being sold to American consumers that bear a counterfeit UL Mark. This may mean that the lamps don’t actually meet current safety standards, and shouldn’t be used in homes.

You’ve probably seen the UL mark tag on a wide variety of electrical devices and appliances in your home. It’s been around for decades, and means that the product bearing it has been thoroughly tested, and certified to meet the rigorous safety standards established by the engineers at UL.

As you can imagine, designing and building products that meet these standards is an expensive undertaking. Some manufacturers may be tempted to fake this certification in order to spare themselves this expense, and make more profit on their products.

UL said it has uncovered one case of this happening, involving LED lamps that were make in Korea, and sold by a California distributor called Friendly Service Sales. The lamps are 7-watt LED lamps, Model No. XPL13-41K.

According to UL, these lamps were known to be sold at eBay by seller friendlyservicesales1, and may have been sold at other locations as well. These lamps may or may not be actually dangerous, but they most certainly have not been tested and certified by UL. The fact that the maker produced them with a fake UL Mark is reason enough not to use them.

Find out more at UL.