Buying Luxeons from Future Electronics...

I guess Future is the official distibuter for lumileds, their prices
seem pretty good, and a good selection seem to be available in small quantities.
Is there some catch that makes people avoid buying from them?

Thanks
Bill W

S bin, but they arent that bad, and they are very cheap.

I cant say, never bought from them before

If you're going to order, order a lot to make up for the shippign charges.

Last I ordered they charge like $8 s/h UPS AND charge tax no matter what state you live in!

They only sell S bins? I thought their Lux's were unbinned?

There Lux's are binned, but a good percentage of the time you will get S-binned Lux IIIs or Q-binned Lux Is - if you are lucky enough to get a T flux Lux III it is usually of a less desireable tint or very high Vf too - though occasionally you will get some good ones - I ordered some Lux Is and received RX0H (of course the next order left me with some QxxJ ones instead so it is pretty random).

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IsaacHayes said:
If you're going to order, order a lot to make up for the shippign charges.

Last I ordered they charge like $8 s/h UPS AND charge tax no matter what state you live in!

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No kidding, plus a $5 handling fee, I'm assuming for when your order is below a certian subtotal - know what this is?

So buying 2 Lux III red-orange stars in the end cost me $28, which is a far cry from the $13.50 or so that you see when they are added to your cart.

Future also overpackages like crazy. The box I got my 2 stars in was 6"x6"x6", and filled with a ballon packing filler...the stars were in a anti-static bag at the very bottom of the box (no padding between the box and the bag) - so much for padding the contents....

Ordered 5 assorted Luxeons from them a few weeks ago; used the shipping option of $9.00 for 3 to 5 day ground shipping, and to ship all at once, not seperately.

They made three separate charges to my card for this single order, then, I got ONE of the Luxeons in 7 days, and the other four showed up in 11 days.

The charges on my card didn't make much sense, since none of them were for the amount of the merchandise plus or minus shipping, no matter how you added them up. Came to a total of $23.00 shipping on $44.00 worth of merchandise weighing two ounces, that could have been shipped for four dollars using priority mail, and gotten here faster..

I did drop them an email about it, and received a polite response the next day that they would issue a credit for the $14.00 overcharge.. It hasn't showed up in my account yet, but I have hopes that it will be made good eventually..

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smitty244 said:
There Lux's are binned, but a good percentage of the time you will get S-binned Lux IIIs or Q-binned Lux Is - if you are lucky enough to get a T flux Lux III it is usually of a less desireable tint or very high Vf too - though occasionally you will get some good ones - I ordered some Lux Is and received RX0H (of course the next order left me with some QxxJ ones instead so it is pretty random).

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I got TWOJ on my order.

Personally, I'd recommend calling them and working with a Future Electronics Luxeon Specialist.

The white Lux III in my order was a TY1J & the white Lux V was a VX1T.

I didn't ask for anything special, just ordered online and took "the luck of the draw"..

sometimes I feel that its verrrry silly for Future Electronics...... they are major and only distributors.... and yet they do not offer a choice to user for a particular bin & Vf ...

People like me (a newbie basically) will never ever get in to this luxeon Lottery $tuff.

I find it always comfortable with the Sandwitch Shoppie or PhotonFanatic when it comes to a choice of having Bin's & Vf's .. they are certainly far better... ... You Know What You are Buying /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Future Electronics = "Play Win" kind of game...

don't we have enough gamble's around our life.... to take on another one on Luxeon.. isnt really worth.

Price!... well ...its better to get them at slightly higher price for the choice.. than investing your money in a Lottery....

Personally, I do not have anything against Future Electronics or any favor for Sandwitch Shoppie or PhotonFanatic ... the option stated above is just a neutral option.

Often, if you call Future, they will sell them at a lower cost than the online prices, btw.

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Silviron said:
Ordered 5 assorted Luxeons from them a few weeks ago; used the shipping option of $9.00 for 3 to 5 day ground shipping, and to ship all at once, not seperately.

They made three separate charges to my card for this single order, then, I got ONE of the Luxeons in 7 days, and the other four showed up in 11 days.

The charges on my card didn't make much sense, since none of them were for the amount of the merchandise plus or minus shipping, no matter how you added them up. Came to a total of $23.00 shipping on $44.00 worth of merchandise weighing two ounces, that could have been shipped for four dollars using priority mail, and gotten here faster..

I did drop them an email about it, and received a polite response the next day that they would issue a credit for the $14.00 overcharge.. It hasn't showed up in my account yet, but I have hopes that it will be made good eventually..

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Almost the exact thing happened to me last fall with my first and only order to Future.

Silviron: call them back. I had them send me the wrong part once and they said they'd credit me and send me the new part. Well they sent me the new part but charged me for it and shipping again. I had to call a couple times before I got refunded! It depends who answers too /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Evan, I have no idea what the min order to get a discount break is.. Calling them and orderign that way you get a lower price though. 20 something for a luxV a couple years ago.

Here are the top three electronics distributors, based on 2003 sales:

Avnet $5,100,000,000
Arrow $4,947,000,000
Future $2,000,000,000 (industry estimate)

Now it would seem to me that you don't get to $2 billion in sales by catering to people looking to buy $100 or less.

To even be able to afford taking such small orders, you have to have considerable infrastructure in place, which costs a lot of money. Obviously, Future tries to not lose too much money on these small orders, so it charges reasonable handling and shipping charges, and it tries not to spend too much time on the phone, either.

For the most part, Future can not guarantee specific bins on small orders, period. So my advice would be to be very polite, ask casually for a specific bin, and smile a lot while doing so. Yes, they can tell if you are smiling or not. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin07.gif

True, but whats with charging tax if you don't live where there warehouses are... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Whether they charge taxes or not will be based on whether they have a business prescence in a particular state, not where they main warehouses are. They have offices in most areas so they would have to charge taxes just about anywhere. It would be the same with other major distributors.

Semiman

I called them once to ask about purchasing Luxeons from them. They asked for my company name and type of business I do. I mentioned that I'm an individual trying to get some Luxeons from them. They are not willing to sell any to me. I never called again.

It's really ironic, having to buy Luxeons from the US when they are made right here in my country.

SemiMan, Seems to me when I called I was connected to their offices in Canada. Sometimes the person I talked to couldn't speak english very well..

nexro: When I called I told them the name of the place I work since I had them shipped there anyways. They asked what plans I had for the luxeons and I said it was just to experiment with. They didn't ask anything else...