Personal Refurbished GPS systems Are Great Deals

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 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 inexpensive refurbished GPS devices 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”. Some refurbished GPS are still in their pristine, pre-production condition and haven’t even left their own packaging. Take a look at these reasons why any product could labeled as “refurbished”:

1. The product was a “return” by the customer that purchased it, which means that they returned the item to the store that they bought it from within 30 days of the purchase date. 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”. Here a store could simply mark down the product since it was opened and put it back out for customers to purchase, or ship the GPS back to TomTom, Garmin, or Magellan; once the company that made the product get it, 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 sell the “refurbished” product to specific retailers/wholesalers for a greatly reduced price. There is a small chance that the product has not even been opened.

3. Another reason could be that the product was the one on display in the store. When this is the case, the product eventually gets sent back to the manufacturer; 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. 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 content it is now actually less likely to become defective than the non refurbished products sitting on the shelves of the retail stores; 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.