I am with you on this. While I am not an expert on contract law I suspect whoever buys the goods and sells them to the customer will end up with the liability for replacing.

When I started doing electrics in the early 70's there was little that I installed that would fail and if something failed it was most likely to be a replaceable component. In recent years I have replaced (FOC) any number of integrated LED fittings from major suppliers and the smaller suppliers and a fair number of PIRs. The mark up on the fittings does not cover the high level of failures especially when I am doing "mates rates" for local charities or the local church. On the church I have replaced a high level  external flood light three times in the last six years, it is only used a couple of times a year and it is usually just before Christmas the failure is detected with gale force winds and rain to contend with while replacing! Each replacement requires two visits one to find the fault and one to fix it The last time I had to get a load-all with a cage to lift me up as I am getting too old to work at height on ladders apart from any H&S recommendations. 

I think the manufacturers/suppliers need to be made to pay the replacement fitting costs as well as a replacement part they may then be incentivised to make their products more reliable.

I await with trepidation the call back for LED lighting flat panels that have not lasted the expected duration that they are supposed to.

Most come with a 5 year warrantee........I, as a result specify that after one year - my time to replace these fittings, if necessary, -  will be chargeable.

We've carried out thousands of LED flat panel changeovers (From T8s or T5s) over the last few years. Its been a bit of a band wagon thing - in my case its been client driven - they've instructed me, and often I try to dissuade the change over, but with energy saving being the driving factor - very often clients are sold the dream - and I'm very sure its going to end in tears as (half?) the fittings don't last the required duration of 5 years, then those fittings will in turn have a 5 year warantee, that - again (Half?) doesn't last. Seems to be a fast way to going out of business to me...... but we'll see. 

PS: that figure of (half?) is just a complete uninformed guess on my part. Clearly the manufacturers feel that the fittings should last this long. 

As an installer I use a well known brand and pass on their garantees to the client. What else can I do? No ways do I install, on a commercial scale, some no name brand, but if I did and it came with a manufacturers guarantee, - what else can you do? It'll be interesting if the Chinese LED flat panels every get challenged in court for not lasting the duration required, and someone tries to get 2000 fittings replaced on year 2,3,4.5. 

I'm sure there's small print galore, for every brand, that means the manufacturers will put the onus on the clients to use the fittings only in a certain way, and then to prove that that's what they have been doing, before they'll replace 2000 fittings in one building for example. A court case like this will certainly come up I'm sure of it. 

It sounds like the manufacturer should be taken to task, not the consultant even if the consultant specified the luminaires (if they did which isn't always the case).