Exactly! I was really suspicious of how they'd work given their design. Suspicions were confirmed.Made that same mistake with the sylvania LED's. They point backwards-ish to light up a reflector, which we don't have in our reverse lights. I ended up getting some LED's off amazon that have a little projector on the end to throw light straight out and they're fantastic!
I took them back, taped up just like in the picture along with the receipt and explained how they didn't work for my application; received a refund. Which was nice, because they were about $15 for the pair.