When I’m browsing on a deals site and someone posts this great deal on a product, then the next post is someone saying just one word “refurbished” – uhh, okay, and your point is? It seems like people view refurbs, reconditioned, factory restored, or something along those lines as a bad thing. Well, I’ve had pretty good experiences with refurbished products.
The first refurbished thing I bought was a Sony Mavica MVC-FD95. That was my first digital camera and I got a pretty sweet deal on it (sold it for 50% more than what I bought it for after about three or so years of using it). It worked just like a brand new camera. It was awesome… I really miss the 10x optical zoom on it. My digital camera now (Canon Powershot S30) doesn’t even come close to the FD95’s zoom.
My next experience with a factory restored product was with my ReplayTV 5040 that I got a couple years ago. This was another awesome deal… a 5040 with lifetime activation (NO MONTHLY FEES!) for pretty much the cost of activation alone. This was when they were clearing out the 5000 series that had commercial advance and show sharing, so I wanted to make sure I got one. Anyway, when I got it, this thing looked brand spankin’ new. No cosmetic defects or anything and it works just like new. And it’s been working well ever since I got it. I upgraded the hard drive in it to 80 gigs so I could record more stuff. 🙂
My third refurbished product is something I’m using at this very moment. My Dell Inspiron 600M. I got this from the Dell Outlet in January. Pretty much the stuff they sell in the outlet are systems that were returned because people changed their minds about them. So these systems were probably never even powered on at all. Dell can’t really sell them as new anymore since they’re not new, so they sell them in the outlet as “refurbished” – well, I’m glad for that because I got a great computer for a pretty good price. 🙂
People who don’t appreciate deals on refurbished products don’t know what they’re missing out on. These products are like new. Possibly even better than new because when they’re returned, they’re inspected and made sure that they’re working smoothly before they’re resold, so you’ll probably never get a DOA refurbed product. And most of the time, they carry the same warranty as if you bought a brand new product, so you still have that assurance if you do have problems with it. If you haven’t given refurbs a try, you might want to consider them for your next purchase… except for certain perishable goods, health and beauty products, and others of that sort. I mean more like electronics and stuff like that. 😉