Where did the refurb market come from?

[Carson Dyle]

I probably would not buy refurb hard drives or SSDs, however.

I use a refurb SSD as the OS disk in my file server. Hasn't given me a spot of trouble in over 18 months of use. I have no idea what constitutes a refurb SSD ... Did they replace chips within it? Or was it just a clueless customer returning a product? I do expect that it was tested thoroughly, though, before marking it and reselling it, so I have no concerns.

 

[rudeguy]

I'm questioning just how much is returned. There would need to be a cheap way to collect all the returns and process them. I imagine that cost along would amount to something significant.

On top of that the would examine it then at the very least clean it up before reselling. If the product is defective, a part will have to be replaced. I would think that the automated process to manufacture a product from scratch would be cheaper than to spend man hours examining a product and then paying someone to rebuild it on an individual basis. Isn't that the definition of economies of scale?

This is how the process works:

Company A sells new stuff. Customer returns product to Company A.
Company A piles up returns, then sells them to company B. Company A does not inspect, sort or separate returns. It just sells pallets of junk to company B.
Company B buts bulk lots from lots of different companies. Company B tests and sorts junk into A, B, C and D grades. Company B does not repair, fix or clean up any product. Company B sends out product lists to its customers and/or lists their inventory on websites.
Company C sees product they want in a condition they want and buys that product from Company B. Company C cleans, fixes or refurbishes product. Company C then puts out their own inventory lists to its customers.
Company D buys product in bulk form Company C and sells them to consumers.

This is why your iPhone that you think is worth $400 only sells for $150. 4 different companies have to touch that product for it to be worth $400.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Pretty much everything that gets returned to a retailer due to buyer's remorse gets sent back to the vendor, checked, and sold as a "refurb" through another outlet - most often the product was never even used. Very often, the buyer simply bought the wrong thing or had no idea how to set it up.

Many sellers will resell much of that as "open box" rather than returning it to the manufacturer. Newegg, among others. I doubt that Newegg sells anything as refurbished if it hasn't been returned to the manufacturer and recertified as such by the manufacturer.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I use a refurb SSD as the OS disk in my file server. Hasn't given me a spot of trouble in over 18 months of use. I have no idea what constitutes a refurb SSD ... Did they replace chips within it? Or was it just a clueless customer returning a product? I do expect that it was tested thoroughly, though, before marking it and reselling it, so I have no concerns.

Yeah I am not sure how they refurb it, but I wouldn't put critical data on it. That's just me and my paranoia though.

 

[ultimatebob]

Refurbished, AKA rebuilt, re-manufactured, and reconditioned, has been around for a very, VERY long time.

Yeah... before online deal sites like Woot, you could easily get refurbished products from electronics catalogs like Damark in the 90's.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Yeah I am not sure how they refurb it, but I wouldn't put critical data on it. That's just me and my paranoia though.

Critical data should be backed up anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Ichinisan]

I use a refurb SSD as the OS disk in my file server. Hasn't given me a spot of trouble in over 18 months of use. I have no idea what constitutes a refurb SSD ... Did they replace chips within it? Or was it just a clueless customer returning a product? I do expect that it was tested thoroughly, though, before marking it and reselling it, so I have no concerns.

Almost certainly just buyer's remorse.

 

[Ichinisan]

Many sellers will resell much of that as "open box" rather than returning it to the manufacturer. Newegg, among others. I doubt that Newegg sells anything as refurbished if it hasn't been returned to the manufacturer and recertified as such by the manufacturer.

Yeah. Buyers often claim there's a problem so they don't get charged for the return. Then the seller almost always sends it back to the vendor for compensation and it eventually gets sold as a refurb through another outlet.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Critical data should be backed up anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Yes, it's still an issue if the refurbs are more likely to fail -- I don't want to HAVE to restore data if I can avoid it. I don't know if that's the case or not and I would like to see some figures to see if refurbs are any more or less likely to die.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Yes, it's still an issue if the refurbs are more likely to fail -- I don't want to HAVE to restore data if I can avoid it. I don't know if that's the case or not and I would like to see some figures to see if refurbs are any more or less likely to die.

It all depends on what the issue is and what testing is done prior to sale. In many cases, engineering flaws are fixed on refurbished items and the units are repackaged for sale. If the engineering flaws aren't addressed and the failing parts are merely replaced, you could potentially have the same issue down the road.

I bought a Netgear wifi router (802.11b). It started having intermittent problems. After being powered on, the WAP would disappear until I shut the unit down for 5 minutes and restarted it. I felt the housing and realized there was a major heat issue with the unit... Support was no help, but it wasn't long after I saw that same model being offered as a refurb from a lot of places. It was obvious they had mis-engineered something and were just trying to dump their inventory. To this day, I avoid all Netgear routers for this reason....they failed to replace or fix the issue under warranty and from the number of refurbs they had knew there was a problem.

 

[Ichinisan]

It all depends on what the issue is and what testing is done prior to sale. In many cases, engineering flaws are fixed on refurbished items and the units are repackaged for sale. If the engineering flaws aren't addressed and the failing parts are merely replaced, you could potentially have the same issue down the road.

I bought a Netgear wifi router (802.11b). It started having intermittent problems. After being powered on, the WAP would disappear until I shut the unit down for 5 minutes and restarted it. I felt the housing and realized there was a major heat issue with the unit... Support was no help, but it wasn't long after I saw that same model being offered as a refurb from a lot of places. It was obvious they had mis-engineered something and were just trying to dump their inventory. To this day, I avoid all Netgear routers for this reason....they failed to replace or fix the issue under warranty and from the number of refurbs they had knew there was a problem.

Did you consider that those refurbs might have actually been refurbished? Perhaps there was a problem with thermal compound application at the factory and they re-applied it. Maybe they removed heat spreaders and attached larger ones. Maybe they changed the exterior housing with new ones that had better ventilation.

 

[ElFenix]

i have a theory hypothesis untested baseless assumption that refurb camera lenses from the manufacturer are more likely to be 'good' copies than new, unopened ones.

 

[poofyhairguy]

The nice thing about buying a refurb is it has usually been fully tested at least 3 times.

That is why I buy refurb, someone looks at it.

Only category where refurb has burned me is PSUs. But I keep trying.

 

[Meghan54]

Yeah. Buyers often claim there's a problem so they don't get charged for the return. Then the seller almost always sends it back to the vendor for compensation and it eventually gets sold as a refurb through another outlet.

Not really unless the item is a high dollar, high margin product, like Dyson vacuums, which are everywhere.

The low dollar, low margin products are rarely, if ever, returned to the mfgr. Instead, the retailer gets a credit for the return and then the product is included in a mass sell to a "wholesaler" who sells the returned/broken junk by pallet to those that specialize in not-quite-retail markets, like flea marketers, thrift stores and auctions.

For example, Warehouse One, a smallish retailer returns "wholesaler" sells returns by the pallet or the truckload. They buy from a distribution entity that purchases returns directly from places like Home Depot, Sears, WalMart, KMart, Lowes, Harbor Freight, drug stores, etc.

http://www.warehouseone.net/



It's really rare to see anything being returned to the mfgr. unless it's electronics (high margin stuff) or expensive tools, etc. Small appliances, clothes, HBA (health and beauty aids---this stuff is almost always new but overstock, poor sellers, or out of style), "junk" tools like low end crap from HF, Lowes, HD, toys, and many other cheap items we would throw away when it breaks and not bother to get it repaired/RMA'd.


Be surprised how much returned stuff is auctioned or sold by the pallet every day.

 

[pontifex]

bought 2 refurb items, 1 good and 1 bad.

1st was a panasonic tv many years ago. thing would not turn on half the time, plastic around the frame was broken but that might have happened during shipping.

2nd was nook HD+ and worked flawlessly, looked brand new.

 

[Jeff7]

I think compared to other items electronics return rate may be quite high! People either don't like it or they damage it or it was already damaged. Anyway, the manufactures know there is probably very little wrong with it anyway and rather to destroy it they will re-sell it as refurb to recoup.

I have a strong suspicion that many small cheap electronics may actually be refurb or using refurb components anyway.

I heard this story at work recently:
Someone's relative bought a wifi router. It worked perfectly with all devices in the house, including phones, laptops, and tablets; all except for a single iPad. After a few minutes of fiddling with the iPad, the router was returned to the store. "It doesn't work properly."





What people want: They want a device that has one, possibly two buttons on it. Anything more is too complicated. But that button needs to be "Read my mind and make the device do exactly what I want it to do. More buttons make my head hurt."
For example: Many people don't know that there are mice out there with more than 2 buttons. I've found that a surprising number of people don't know that you can right-click on highlighted words in a browser and do a search for them that way. Many don't use the right button at all. "That usually screws something up if I click anything with that." These are the kinds who will have two or three things open at a time. If they've got Firefox open and want to look at a Word document, Firefox gets closed first, Word opened, then Word is closed, then Firefox is opened again. This is not a very rare occurrence. (Meanwhile, I've got a mouse with 9 programmable buttons.)

Or a PDF will get printed, then scanned, and then the scanned version is emailed out because the scanner automatically adds it as an attachment when it sends it to the person. They don't know that attachments can be dragged and dropped to new emails. Or simply use the Forward button.

 

[lxskllr]

The nice thing about buying a refurb is it has usually been fully tested at least 3 times. Once when before I buy it, once after I refurb it and once when the wholesalers get it.

This is why I like refurbs. They've been tested, and proven to work. New stuff is built by technically competent robots, but doa parts get through the process.

I've never had a single issue buying real refurbs. BestBuy "open box" is a completely different story. Those assholes would put everything on the shelf without doing even rudimentary testing. I've had less than a 50% success rate with them. The junk returns fine, but it's a waste of everyone's time, and with gas at ~$3/gal, it can be a non-trivial expense returning something that should never have been sold in the first place.

 

[BUTCH1]

My first X86 was a refurb, a 386-SX16 for $400!

 

[VirtualLarry]

I use a refurb SSD as the OS disk in my file server. Hasn't given me a spot of trouble in over 18 months of use. I have no idea what constitutes a refurb SSD ... Did they replace chips within it? Or was it just a clueless customer returning a product? I do expect that it was tested thoroughly, though, before marking it and reselling it, so I have no concerns.

I bought some "refurb" OCZ SSDs from Newegg a year or so ago.

Two of them were 240GB OCZ Vertex Plus R2 units, which use a Barefoot 2 controller. I was already familiar with them, having had some 120GB models of the same previously (bought new). I felt that the controller was a stable one (never had an end-user firmware update, that I know of), and that they would be reliable.

I also purchased five 50GB OCZ Vertex2 "refurbs", which I believe were "old new stock" - sold as refurb so as not to have to provide the 3-year warranty support for them. I came to this theory, because 50GB is kind of an odd size, and probably not their best seller, so they probably had leftover stock.

So the 240GB SSDs, had some SMART data that indicated that they had been used. The 50GB, none that I could see.

I did have some issues with the 240GB SSDs, in my Foxconn NanoPC. It has a C-70 APU (9W TDP, I think), which is passively cooled. I used to run it continuously as my HTPC, and the SSD got rather warm, along with everything else in the unit. After a month or two, the SSD had started to develop bad sectors (determined by a surface scan with HDTune), and eventually, some of the OS system files corrupted.

I came to the conclusion that using an SSD in that NanoPC wasn't the wisest idea, and because those SSDs had been worn, the cells had more trouble accurately holding a charge, and exposing them to heat, caused them to develop ECC errors, which showed up as bad sectors.

Doing a secure-erase fixed the bad sectors (I did that twice), and then I put them into my Q9300 desktop rigs that are well-cooled, and never had the bad-sector problem again. (I still scan them from time to time just in case, but so far, so good.)

I put a 30GB OCZ Agility (Barefoot 1 controller, purchased new, used slightly by me) into the NanoPC, and it developed one bad sector too, after a month or two. It wasn't as bad as the 240GB was, probably because the SSD wasn't worn, but it still happened, which led me to believe the problem was the temps, and not the fact, specifically, that the 240GB was a used, worn, refurb.

 

[mmntech]

I've bought a few refurbished items in my time with mostly positive results.

Samsung HDTV. Worked good but had an annoying high pitched whine when it warmed up. Apparently was a common flaw with that particular model. Used it for a couple years, bought a new TV, and gave it to my dad. He's deaf as a post so he doesn't even notice.

Nintendo DS I got from EB Games. Minor surface scratches but otherwise fine.

iPad (1st Generation) bought as an Open Box item. Didn't even look like it had been touched. Still had the original plastic protective film on it, undisturbed.

Apple TV 3, which I got my parents for Christmas a couple years ago. Does have flaky WiFi so I just hooked it up via Ethernet. Otherwise works great.

Wii U, which I snagged for $200 a couple months ago. Thing looked brand new when I took it out of the box. Aside from the refurbished sticker on the bottom, there's no way you'd be able to tell. Zero issues with it so far.

Certain things I wouldn't buy refurb, like data storage. I'd never buy open box stuff sight unseen. When I got the iPad, I made them take it out of the box so I could check to see that everything worked.

 

[MadScientist]

A lot of companies now have a remanufacturing company like PRC Industries http://prcind.com/remanufacturing/remanufacturing.html remanufacture, as opposed to refurbish, their products for them.
I purchased a Breville remanufactured juice extractor from Amazon last year. It was advertised as being remanufactured by Breville but I noticed on the box that the juicer was shipped in that in small print under Certified Remanufactured it states "PRC Industries has remanufactured this product under license from Breville, USA", and was shipped from PRC directly to Amazon.

It looked like new when I received it. We use it about twice a week and it works great.