On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 12:39:00 +0100, Andy Burns wrote:

I didn't want to faff about convincing them to refund/replace, so I took
it apart, hoping I might find an obviously failed capacitor in an easily
accessible location, no such luck.

Fairly normal layout, all potted in soft silicone, input resistors to
mains rectifier to bead-type smoothing caps, then there was a wirewound
resistor feeding into the ICs/transistor chopper section, feeding small
transformer and output smoothing caps.

The wirewound resistor was burnt to a crisp (the lamp didn't fail
spectacularly just flickered then faded away) all the surrounding SMDs
looked like their solder was cooked and discoloured, one surface
resistor had melted away from the PCB, so looks like long term
overheating.

I shall have to open up the two that failed here recently. I shall
add that they failed when our overnight mains voltage was pushing 255
and occasionally reached 260... What is the German tolerance on the
nominal 230 V they are marked?

Indeed, sod lidaldi for LEDs in future, the LEDhut ones of similar age
(fewer hours and lower wattage) are still going OK,

That's hardly a fair comparison. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave.