Have you seen all the refurbished GPS devices for sale, in just about every online retailer that you can find? This makes total sense, considering the popularity of the hand held refurbished devices, and especially the automotive GPS devices.
What are the reasons behind this deluge of cheap refurbished GPS out on the market right now? There are actually a slew of reasons why companies are either forced or willingly choose to mark their GPS products as refurbished. Oddly enough, some of the refurbished GPS devices have actually never even had a problem at all, and in some cases, they are still brand new, literally still factory sealed. The most common reasons for electronics based products (IE: GPS devices) becoming “refurbished” are:
1. For one reason or another the product was sent back to the place of purchase, which means that they returned the item to the store that they bought it from within 30 days of the purchase date. There could have been some defect in the GPS, but this can also not the case; buyers remorse sets in and they decide they need to return the product.
2. The product sat on the store shelf too long and became “overstock”. When this happens, the store will either sell the product for a clearance price, or send the product back to the manufacturer; once the company that made the product get it, the manufacturer will, in come cases, label the product “refurbished”, and then sell the “refurbished” product to specific retailers/wholesalers for a greatly reduced price. The funny part about this is the simple fact that the product is still literally brand new, and has never even been opened at all.
3. The product was a “demonstration” or “display model”. Display models almost always get sent back to the unit maker; the manufacturer then inspects (and repairs, if necessary) the product, and labels it as refurbished.
4. The product was opened. If this happens and the store doesn’t want to deal with the unit themselves they send it back to the manufacturer who reseals it and labels it refurbished.
5. Shipping damage. Sometime boxes get crushed or dropped by shipping personnel, if the damage is major or minor, components or just cosmetic, the unit is shipped back and labeled refurbished.
6. There was a defect in the product. This is can be a rare scenario. When a product has a defect or cosmetic damage it is sent back to the manufacturer for repair, and anything that they can find fault with and fix they do; once the repair is done the GPS is as good as new, and some might content it is now actually less likely to become defective than the non refurbished products sitting on the shelves of Best Buy; they argue this because refurbished devices generally undergo a battery of tests.
In examining all these reasons we can see that refurbished GPS devices are probably just as good as “new” devices. The chances of getting a bad unit is probably just as likely as getting a “new” one so take the plunge, save some money, and go refurbished.
