Question about refurbished routers

[llmercll]

I'm looking into a refurbished dir-655 on ebay, and just wondering if refurbished items are as good as their new counterparts. or if they have an increased failure rate or lower life expectancy.

the seller is actually a best buy outlet store, which is reassuring, and savings are probably going to be around 30-40 bucks.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

My opinion would be that, like anything else that had been used, there is a gamble of a slightly increased chance of failure due to <whatever> conditions the unit experienced. Electronic devices can be sensitive to the quality of the electrical source they are plugged into. Little brown outs can lower their lifespan, they may not immediately cook the device. Did the prior owner have good quality electrical circuits in their home? //shrug

Did the unit lockup on the prior owner a few times a month? Is that why they returned it?

OTOH, factory refurbs can be a good bargain. I usually purchase my laptops through IBM/Lenovos factory outlet. I get a 6 month to a year old model that originally cost about 2 grand, for about 600 - 700 bucks.

 

[scotty]

Factory refurbs can sometimes be a bargain. Sometimes it's just due to a minor defect or change. That said, you are obviously rolling the dice a little bit. There's usually at least a 30 or 90 day warranty. So if you're comfortable, give it a go, try to put it through some paces, and you'll probably come out OK.

That said, routers are important enough for me that it's one of the few things I would be very hesitant in buying refurb'd. If it's for someone on a very limited budget or who might only use the internet very rarely, ok. But otherwise the amount of pain a finicky router can cause in a place where it's used a lot isn't worth the trouble for me, as I'm the first person who gets summoned to fix it.

 

[Cooly]

Hello Everyone !

Router refurbished by the manufacturer are mainly the ones that were returned for no-reason, original spec failures (to be corrected by fw update) or with slight manufacturing problems.

For example, I bought Wrv200 for my company, we had so many problems with them that the hotline offered us to return the products, and then another time, and then our tech asked for another return and again and again... so did he for all his customers.

In fact all these routers were in good state, the problem was later corrected (or not ?) by a firmware update.

I think those routers were refurbished and it may represent a large amount on a worldwide basis.

 

[Fuzzilla]

Something to consider:

Production items are tested say 1 in 100 (it varies). Price markup usually allows 200% profit, so anything that comes back for repair is a 50% profit loss (1/2 of the 200% profit). Once returned to market for resale, if it fails again it's 100% profit loss. Most mfgrs test refurbs 100% before shipping them out to avoid another return for this reason.

HTH