Personal Refurbished GPS systems Are Relatively Inexpensive
Posted in GPS by Michael Dunsby on April 28th, 2009 Have you ever noticed that there seems to be a huge abundance of refurbished GPS devices for sale, in just about every online retailer that you can find? This shouldn’t come as a shocker to anyone, considering the popularity of the hand held refurbished devices, and especially the automotive GPS devices.
So why are there literally thousands, if not 10’s of thousands of refurbished navigation GPS on the market? There are actually a slew of reasons why companies are either forced or willingly choose to mark their GPS products as refurbished. Some refurbished GPS are still in their pristine, pre-production condition and haven’t even left their own packaging. Here is a list of some of the common reasons why electronics can get marked as “refurbished” by their manufacturer:
1. For one reason or another the product was sent back to the place of purchase, this generally indicates that the original owner of the product took advantage of the store’s return policy for one reason or another. In some circumstances the reason behind this return has nothing to do with the functionality or quality of the product; sometimes people just don’t want the product that they bought.
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 deliver the unit to it source; when the product is sent back to the manufacturer, the company has to decide what to do with the product – sometimes they just label it as refurbished after making sure it works, and then put the units back out on the market at a marked down 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. Another reason could be that the product was the one on display in the store. Display models almost always get sent back to the unit maker; the factory then inspects the product, makes any necessary changes, and ships it back out under the refurbished label.
4. The device’s packaging was opened by a customer. When this is the case, there is nothing wrong with the product, other than it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer to be repackaged, in which case, oddly enough, it is then labeled as “refurbished”.
5. Shipping damage. When this happens, it usually just means that only the box that the product was in got damaged, but if anything other than the product was damaged (accessories, or the actual unit), it is completely fixed or replaced by the manufacturer.
6. The last reason why a GPS might be labeled in this way is that it didn’t work as promised. This can be pretty common depending on the batch of GPS navigation units. Once the defective GPS is in the hands of the manufacturer they test it to see what exactly is wrong with it, 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 say it is now actually less likely to become defective than the non refurbished products sitting on the shelves of the electronics outlets; they argue this because refurbished devices generally undergo a battery of tests.
Refurbished GPS units represent a value to consumers that they should take advantage of. There may still be some bad apples in the barrell, but probably not more than if they were all “new” devices.
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