I love LED bulbs because they should theoretically last forever and use the same watts as a CFL. However, when they start dying after a year or two, you begin to question whether you should have been buying $10+ light bulbs. I currently have 7 Cree 60W lightbulbs that have issues. 6 of them are the TW series where it's supposed to show true colors. You can tell that type of bulb (on the right) by the purplish color of the glass as well as the larger heatsink fins around the base.
I contacted Cree on their facebook page after seeing so many other people complain about the same issue and seeing a positive response from Cree. So after a few emails, they are sending me all new replacement bulbs and they didn't ask for receipts or anything. They told me to dispose of the bulbs. I thought maybe they would want them back for failure analysis but I'm sure they know what the problem is already.
So thinking it would be neat to reverse engineer the bulb, I was going to take one apart but thought for sure someone has already done this on youtube. Sure enough they have. In the comments of that video, someone explained how most of the failures are due to a loose wire near the base of the bulb. They explained how you can take a flat head screwdriver and dent the metal right near the wire to make a better connection. So considering I had 7 bulbs with nothing to lose, I started hammering away. I managed to resurrect 4 of the 7 bulbs. I'm not sure how long they'll last but at least they are working for now. If you look closely at the bulb on the right, you can see a burn mark where the bulb failed. That is pretty much where the wire is. Most of the bulbs have the wire in the same place.
Now if you get a bulb where the LEDs are glowing dimmly, well this fix didn't work for those. This fix is for when the LEDs are flickering and then completely turn off.
Here's a picture of the glowing LEDs.
