Sunrise alarm clocks and why Lumie customer service sucks

Many years ago my wife bought me a bedside alarm clock with a built in sunrise feature. If you’ve not come across this kind of thing, before the alarm comes on, a light slowly brightens on the clock, simulating a sunrise, both in brightness and colour tone. The idea is that it wakes you more naturally and you’ll feel more refreshed than being awoken suddenly by a loud noise.

It was made by a British company called Lumie, who solely creates products based on light therapy.

Switching around

It worked but, used a traditional glass bulb (albeit a special one that could produce the kind of light that was needed) so was incredibly bulky. Eventually, I went back to a standard clock.

However, the idea of a “sunrise clock” still intrigued me and, in 2016, I bought a Philips model. Apart from a few Chinese rip-offs, Lumie and Philips are the main producers of such clocks.

The Philips took up a lot less space – it was disc shaped, tall and wide but not deep, thanks to use of LEDs. I lived with the Philips for 8 years but it’s biggest issue was the use of touch sensitive buttons – when you’re waking in the morning, eyes barely open, you need tactile buttons. Also, it had no battery backup and, if there was a power cut, the time would be reset. Worst of all, there was no automatic dimming of the display at night – it could be changed manually in steps, so I had it set permanently on the lowest one, which was best for nighttime. During the day, though, it wasn’t readable.

Back to Lumie

I sold the Philips and returned to Lumie, who were now also using LEDs. Not that their products are much smaller. I bought the Lumie “Bodyclock Glow 150”, which still has a hefty footprint. Physical buttons though. I bought that last year.

Apart from both a sunset and sunrise option (the sunset allows you to use the clock as a nightlight, which slowly dims down over a period of time to get you ready to sleep), the Lumie doesn’t do much more. It retains the time during a power cut and automatically dims the display at night, which is good, and has a choice of alarms for when it hits your specific wake time, inc. bird song (which is the option I used – the Philips did the same thing). The Philips had an FM radio but, I never used it, so that wasn’t missed. One thing the Philips did but the Lumie doesn’t is to also sound the alarm at a low volume and slowly increase it – the Lumie comes on at a single volume (albeit one you can set – I have it at the lowest and it’s still much louder than the Philips was).

For a product with an RRP of triple figures, you’re really spending that money on the light and the science and research that goes into it. To all intents and purposes this is an alarm clock with a sunrise light attached to it, and not much else. So, it needs to, at least, get the basics right.

Getting the basics wrong

After having the clock for 5-6 months, something went wrong. One morning the light came up and at the allotted alarm time… nothing happened. The alarm sound didn’t go off. I thought that maybe it was me until it happened a number of times over a series of months – neither my wife nor I heard the alarm go off, making us both late for work.

I contacted Lumie to see if this was an issue they were aware of and they said they hadn’t. In fact they suggested I’d forgotten to turn the alarm on (which doesn’t explain why the light was coming on. But, yes, it was turned on each time).

Their offer? For me to return it to them “for repair”. I decided to see how it went. I fully reset the clock and, for a while all was good again. For a few months. Then the alarm didn’t go off again – and this time it did it for multiple days in a row. It was bad enough that I was now setting a second alarm, on a difference device, to make sure.

I contacted Lumie again and they offered me the repair service once more. Lumie give a 3 year warranty, which is excellent, but didn’t realise it was a “return to base” option, where you’re without your device for that time. Oh, and you pay the return postage. That’s not great. This is not a small clock to post up. And, because of the cost of it, the postage will be extra hefty for the insurance.

At this point I’d given up. An alarm clock which can’t get that right is a liability – other than telling the time (which, btw, neither this nor the Philips have an option for automatic time updates, so it needs correcting manually). I told their customer service this and that I planned to sell it. I bought a replacement – a standard non-sunrise alarm clock from a reliable German brand. After a short while, though, they got back to me to say that, this time, they’d pay for it to be returned.

So, with a new clock anyway, I had nothing to loose so returned it. After a few days it was returned. Except mine wasn’t – they sent a refurbished version, complete with the power cable and all in the original box, none of which I included. There was no detail as to whether they found a fault and I’ve not heard from their customer services since. I’ve hooked it up again and will test to see how it goes. The first time the alarm fails to go off, though, it’s going.

Lumie customer service

But let’s loop back to their customer service here for a moment. As I said, they initially told me I had to return the clock, paying for it myself, and included details of how to do this. After I said “no” to that and they, eventually, agreed they’d pay for it, they sent different details, as I needed to go through a link to get a postage label. Those details didn’t say anything about including anything in the packaging with the clock. So, I didn’t. However, Lumie told me they had no way of now tracking it through their system because they needed me to provide details in the box – this was mentioned in their earlier conversation, but not later. I provided my tracking details, however, to them so they could identify it. But their customer service actually argued with me about this, highlighting that I should have included something because they’d told me so (but, as I say, not in the final “this is how to send it” instructions).

Is it the right thing for a customer service department to out-and-out tell a customer they’re wrong? If that customer then points out they weren’t, wouldn’t you then apologise? No such thing happened here.

Indeed, their entire line throughout the last year has been either “you can return it for repair” or arguing that an issue is actually mine.

These are direct quotes from their emails. It doesn’t constitute everything but boils down everything pretty succinctly…

August 2024

Could it have been a case of forgetting to activate the sunrise alarm on the clock before bed on those couple of occasions?

We offer a repair service here and we can take a look at it for you if you’d like?

March 2025

We offer a repair service here and we could take a look at your unit for you.

In our email sent on 27^th March we requested a note to be included.

No apologies at any point. Short sentences. No information to me, as the customer, as to what the issue was.

As somebody who works not just in customer service (and for 30 years) but for the highest level of enterprise service (with customers such as Al Jazeera, News Corp and NASA), this was poor. Let’s break a few things down…

1. Their only attempt at a diagnosis was accusing me of forgetting to have turned off the alarm.
   I get it – people make mistakes. But this is the their opening, and only line? There was far more that could have been done here, and much more subtly than this. As it was, after it occurred on multiple days, I reset the clock which cured it for a while. They didn’t suggest this. They didn’t ask about the light (which, as it had come on, confirmed the alarm had been switched on). They didn’t ask if anybody else was witness to this (my wife not hearing anything would confirm that it wasn’t going off and I’d turned it off, fallen asleep and forgotten about it).
2. Arguing with me about including a note.
   When I mentioned I hadn’t included anything, so wondered how they were tracking it, they then argued that they had asked for one to be included. This wasn’t necessary, and just sounded like they were trying to prove a point (which then failed, as it was only mentioned in a much earlier conversation).
3. A RTB warranty where you have to cover shipping is pretty terrible.
   I get that it may be the user’s fault, but you either have to suck this up or find another solution. After all, if it was the user’s fault, Lumie would still be paying for return postage.
4. No follow-up.
   The last I heard from them was that one sentence where they argued about the shipping note. They received my clock, sent a replacement and it’s been nearly a week since. Without anything. No follow-up. No telling me it was on its way, what they found or checking with me that everything is okay. Nothing.

The reality here is that Lumie should be embarrassed that an alarm clock that costs over £100 can’t even be guaranteed to sound the alarm when instructed to – it’s the most basic of the functions you expect of it, other than showing the time. This was not the time to scrimp on the level of customer support you give and to show little interest in getting to the bottom of the issue.