Trip the ylighting.com fantastic

And now for the saga of the lights. As I mentioned earlier, I ordered my lights from ylighting.com. I place the order while I was in Prague, over a Skype call, which at the time I thought was oh-so-cool and oh-so-clever. Sometimes too clever is dumb. There was one set of lights -- the office and kitchen overhead lights -- that had changed several times due to decisions about whether we were going to dim them and whether we were going to install a Lutron GrafixEye controller, which we ultimately decided to do. We had finally settled on an Artemide Ventana 18" fixture, which is a very simple glass ceiling-mounted flourescent fixture, with a Lutron dimmable ballast, which is not commonly installed in that particular fixture.

So, when I was ordering my lights, it turned out that I couldn't get them with the desired ballast. While I was in Prague, I got on the phone with the lighting salesguy at Ylighting.com, who also got a VP from Artemide on the phone, to advise about these particular lights. The Artemide lights normally would come with a Universal ballast, but apparently those won't work with the GrafixEye switching system. What the VP advised us to do was to just order the lights with the stock ballasts (which are very inexpensive), then have the electrician rip 'em out and put in the lutron ballasts. Sounded like a good plan, so I ordered them.

Upon return home, the lights had arrived very quickly. In speaking with the electrician about it, he had received a price from his wholesale supply company for those lights which was quite a bit higher than what I'd paid. However, his guy had given him a price with the Lutron ballasts. When I explained to him what I'd been told by the Artemide guy, he had to check into it further. Much discussion ensued between him and his supply company, and between the supply company and the lighting designer/local rep. It turned out that the local Artemide rep was saying one thing "Lutron ballasts can be shipped with the lights from the factory" and the Artemide VP was saying something else "Lutron ballasts won't fit in the fixture, and have to be remoted...". At this point I was getting very confused and frustrated, and by now, the lights were no longer returnable, because the return period had passed.

So finally my architect contacted the Artemide rep, and somehow they got together with the Artemide VP, and it turned out that the VP was wrong. As a result, Artemide and Ylighting agreed to return the lights, and to sell me the lights with the correct ballast! So all's well that ends well. The pricing I got was still substantially cheaper than the price my electrician got (probably about $1000 less in total), and at this point, every little bit helps.

The moral is: wait until you have agreement on specs from everyone involved before placing that order. I should have waited until I had a chance to talk with my electrician before ordering those particular lights (kind of like we did with the Smedmarks). Live and learn!

I also have to make a plug for Ylighting.com. They have been fantastic through the whole process. The salesguy I have been working with has been really helpful, and has helped make sure that I am happy (just like you'd want any business to do). And ultimately they were able to fix the problem. Their prices are the best I've been able to find, and the lights have arrived very quickly. So I'm quite content!