Isn’t it strange how there seems to have been an explosion of refurbished GPS devices on the market, in just about every online retailer that you can find? It is really no big surprise, finding quality GPS devices, especially those that you can use in your car, for a low price is definitely something that consumers want.

So why are there literally thousands, if not 10′s of thousands of refurbished GPS out on the market right now? There are actually a lot of different reasons why a unit is going to marked as refurbished by a manufacturer or retailer. 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 person who originally wanted the product brought it back to the store, this generally indicates that the original owner of the product took advantage of the store’s return policy for one reason or another. There could have been some defect in the GPS, but this can also not the case; the person who purchased it just ends up not wanting it.

2. A product could find itself “over stocked” and the company could be looking for ways to unload inventory. Here a store could simply mark down the product since it was opened and put it back out for customers to purchase, or send the product back to the manufacturer; 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 distribute the devices out again at greatly reduced prices. 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 product was opened. When this is the case, there is nothing wrong with the product, other than it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer to be repackaged, in which case, oddly enough, it is then labeled as “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. This is can be a rare scenario. The problems could be cosmetic, like a scratch on the display, or they could be mechanical, like a broken part, and anything that was broken or defective is replaced with brand new parts; once the repair is done the GPS is as good as new, and some might say it is now actually less likely to become defective than the non refurbished products sitting on the shelves of the retail stores; this is due to the fact that refurbished products under go very extensive testing.

Chances are, if you are purchasing a refurbished GPS you are going to be getting a good deal for you money. Not every device out there is going to be great, but there are a lot of excellent units just waiting to be purchased at rock bottom prices.