Have you ever noticed that there seems to be a huge abundance of refurbished GPS devices for sale, within just about any given ecommerce store that can be found by doing a google search? 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 refurbished navigation GPS on the market? Well, that brings us to the important points of WHY so many GPS devices (along with any electronic devices in general) end up being labeled 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. Take a look at these reasons why any product could labeled as “refurbished”:
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; sometimes people just don’t want the product that they bought.
2. The manufacturer created too many of the specific model and needs to get ride of some of their inventory to make room for more. 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, a business decision needs to be made about how to best handle the new inventory, this sometimes has the outcome of the device getting labeled “refurbished”, and then put the units back out on the market at a marked down price. In some cases these “refurbed” products will have never been opened, meaning that the discount is for no reason 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 producer checks out the navigation unit for any defects or damage and then sends it back out to be sold as a refurbished GPS.
4. The device’s packaging was opened by a customer. 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. 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. How common this is depends largely on the product and how many mistake the manufacturer made in creating the product. The problems could be cosmetic, like a scratch on the display, or they could be mechanical, like a broken part, and anything that they can find fault with and fix they do; when the process is complete, the product is literally brand new again, and some might argue 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.
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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