http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnigVvvNP30
Here you see two of the electronic ballasted 58W T8 fluorescent fixture in the fuel station on Hadar city center malfunctioning.
The top fixture have the lamp dim while the bottom have the lamp flickers with the mains.
Both lamps have no any end blackening (Means that these have ballast malfunctioning).

This seems to be quite common. I've seen 3 6ft HF fittings at my college going crazy! One was flicking dim and bright, one randomly switching on and off and the other just remained dim. They have fairly new lamps in too.

Seen some more 6ft twin HF fittings in a hardware shop near me, quite a few of them were faulty from day 1 with several of the tubes suffering from striations going up and down the tubes like crazy. More recently several more of the ballasts seem to be failing with the tubes glowing at about half brightness with crazy looking patterns moving around in them.

The fittings in the hardware store are Philips ones about 2 years old. I don't know about the ones at college because my eyes aren't good enough to read the labels 

Some HF ballasts at my old school failed rather weirdly, the lamps looked badly overdriven for the first few minutes of operation and then the ballasts would just cut out. A good firm whack on the side of fitting would get them going again for a few minutes.

@Eliot_240: All of these fixtures in this fuel station have cheap chinese instant start electronic ballasts without any protections or with electrodes fusing bypassed.
I had even saw lamp having a partial discharge in this station in the past .
Edit: These lamps aren't 58W but 56W.

They don't make them like they used to .

No they don't