Archive for the ‘Refurb Depot’ Category

OK, I mentioned in one of the Retail Partner blurbs (to see a short description of all our Retail Partners, click on the Retail Partners tab in the menu bar near the top of the page) the fact that I like refur­bished equipment. Here’s why.

Manufac­turing companies do quality control inspec­tions on their products before they ship them out. That’s a good thing for me and you, because no one wants to buy junk.

A potential problem with manufac­turers’ quality control is that many companies make so many products that they aren’t able to inspect each and every piece they produce. Or if they do inspect them all, it’s just a cursory inspection. For those who don’t inspect every product, often­times what they will do is perform a thorough spot-check of a few parts randomly pulled off the assembly line.

OK, enough about inspec­tions and new merchandise. What about refurbs?

People return merchandise for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s because the product didn’t work like it was supposed to, but a lot of times it’s because of issues that don’t have anything at all to do with the product being defective in any way. Some products are returned on account of buyer’s remorse, or because the buyer just got laid off from their job and can’t afford the product now, or because their wife found out they bought it and made them send it back. So a whole bunch of products get sent back to the manufac­turer for reasons that have nothing at all to do with product quality.

The manufacture wants to resell all of their returned merchandise, but they have to inspect it first to make sure that it goes out in excellent condition. This means that EVERY piece of returned merchandise gets inspected — not just a random sampling of products, like when the stuff was first shipped out to retailers. So Reason #1 for why I like refurbs is that they have been individ­ually inspected at the factory.

Another problem that manufacturer’s have with returned merchandise is that they can’t sell it as new, because it isn’t new. You’ve heard that as soon as you drive a new car out of the showroom it drops in value by about 25%. That’s because it can no longer be sold as new. It may be very lightly used, but it’s used nonetheless. So that takes me to Reason #2 why I like refurbs — you get a nice discount on them.

What’s not to like about a nearly-new piece of equipment that has been individ­ually factory inspected and marked down in price?

As of this writing, I have two Retail Partners that have a good selection of refur­bished equipment. The first one can be found in the Computers / Electronics section and is called Refurb Depot. Lots of stuff at good discounts, but it doesn’t last long because they don’t get many of any individual item, so if you see something you like, you better jump on it.

The other good refurb dealer is found in our Tools / Hardware / Automotive section. The vendor is called Tool King. They have a really nice section of returned and refur­bished tools from a lot of major manufac­turers. If you want a high-quality brand name tool, but you don’t want to spend top dollar for it, this is the place to shop.

You can thank me later.