Now I don't know whether to laugh or cry. We returned the bulbs today. But, rather than replace them with the same I found a better option - at Canadian Tire I found 6500K bulbs of the same wattage on sale for 2 for $7.50. I guess sometimes things happen for a reason, although saving $4 doesn't exactly offset the cost of gas.

I now have the better lights in place using my homemade fixture, and I'm going to hope for the best from here.