MET Labs & U.L. now competing for your business

[Erik Sine]

Now with MET Laboratories hitting the electric sign industry and competing with U.L. for your business, come January when UL annual renewals are due will you be making the jump over to MET?

[manuellynch]

Now with MET Laboratories hitting the electric sign industry and competing with U.L. for your business, come January when UL annual renewals are due will you be making the jump over to MET?

Read the fine print folks - MET labs says if you have any violation they can drop you instantly. Whereas with UL they work through your violation.

Careful folks. Be very careful.

[Erik Sine]

Any laboratory can drop anyone of their clients who don't follow the standards, signs or otherwise.

There are a lot of shops I wish UL WOULD drop, but that will never happen, a lot of sign companies can attest to this too.

I'm sure there is good money to be made for those who don't produce electric signs to the safe standards from fines & extra repeat visits.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever heard of a sign shop losing their status from deviating from the standards.

[manuellynch]

Any laboratory can drop anyone of their clients who don't follow the standards, signs or otherwise.

There are a lot of shops I wish UL WOULD drop, but that will never happen, a lot of sign companies can attest to this too.

I'm sure there is good money to be made for those who don't produce electric signs to the safe standards from fines & extra repeat visits.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever heard of a sign shop losing their status from deviating from the standards.

My comments came after a discussion with someone pretty knowledgeable at UL. Hopefully he will post here.

It will be difficult for some end customers to get energy rebates through utility companies if products are not "UL Listed"

Doesnt make a lot of sense, but there is much in this world that does not.

[Erik Sine]

We need all the competition we can get.

I hope they do post something here, and I'd like to see the response by Phil from MET.

On the rebates, that's something I'd like to see too.

Rebate programs by the energy companies in it's self is something that as been lacking, and a lot of programs are getting dropped like ugly girlfriends. They have one here in San Diego, and so far no ones been using it (They even called me to ask why). For a short period of time there was the T-12 to T-8 change out, but that was short lived. They also have, the LED retrofit program for channel letters, BIG problem with that is the fact that they will only rebate two linear feet of LED modules at $10 bucks per foot per letter (average sign is about 5-6 linear feet at least).

For a 15 letter sign you can only expect to get $300.00. Well that won't pay for very much, and it would take you 10-15 years to make that money back in some sort of savings which I can't see after labor and material costs. They need to improve these programs if they expect to see anyone trying to take advantage of them, AND, make it for neon electronic transformers too!

Now that I think about it, rebate programs for signs are a big joke anyway. The problem with energy companies, are well, energy companies. California would be a much less expensive place to live if we can get rid of the Birkenstock wearing, BO smelling, tree hugging hippies that prevent us from building more power plants such as Nuclear here in California, and let us drill off shore. That way we don't have the most retarded programs like "Demand Response" that we do here in CA. Bottom line with Signs is the fact that they don't consume very much electricity as it is when you start doing your own calculating. A average sized retail shop will look to pay about $100-$175 a year for the signs energy consumption, and that's with a magnetic transformer or ballast. That's nothing compared to the rest of the overhead any business can expect to pay for the cost of doing business, and signs are one of the most important sales tools to have.

Yes, I went off on a tangent. This means I'm tired. I'm off to bed!

[fishing nut]

Does MET aprove components as well and would they be allowed to be used in conjunction with UL products?

[cgsigns_jamie]

We are listed with ETL.

ETL_Rated.pdf

[dshirley]

Now with MET Laboratories hitting the electric sign industry and competing with U.L. for your business, come January when UL annual renewals are due will you be making the jump over to MET?

Already making the change to Met Lab