Factory Reconditioned Products

Hello eveyone! I was reading and researching some of the sites that were posted on the where to buy car audio equipment from. Forbidden had a great point on buying equipment from your local dealer, but I live in a town of 100,000 in Iowa, and there are 2 major stereo shops (We do not have Best Buy, and other chains) and they are locally owned, but there prices are so high, and they will not come down on prices. The internet has been a god send in building my car systems, and I have not been burned yet (knock on wood) While looking around, I noticed factory reconditioned products, but they only have a 90 day warranty. It seems like thats when most of the problems with electronics occur, but I am still a little leary about buying reconditioned. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance! Tim-May!

If something is reconditioned buy the factory itself. For ex. Kicker refurbishes Kicker stuff, then they are pretty well an ok thing to buy. Because when something is repaired, they find out why it went wrong in the first place and then they fix that problem. I would say that instead of about a 10% chance that you have bought something that is prone to fail....you just increased you chances by about 15-20%. Still not bad odds for the price that you pay.Andrew Weitzel

MECP First Class Installer

I bought a Kenwood KDC 5011 that was refurbished about 6 or 7 years ago. It's been in and out of different vehicles, It's now in a 72 Cutlass and still works like it did when I bought it.2003 Silverado Ext. cab

Kenwood mp922

Kenwood kgc6042a EQ

JL Audio xr650-csi

MB Quart PSC 213

JL Audio 300/4

pair of JL Audio 12w6v2

JL Audio 1000/1

It really depends on who is doing the refurbishing and how they honour the warranty on it. After reading your reply the first thing I would do is take your stack of receipts down to that local stereo shop and show them how much business they have not been getting from you. I would also clue them in that all of your friends also do not shop at their store due to pricing issues. Show the owner or manager these receipts, they should be willing to come to the table, any store is always interested in growing their business, but only a fool would say "I'm not interested". What you are doing is showing the owner or manager that you are a repeat customer and deserve some decent pricing, you are not the person who is going to come in only once and want a deal or else you'll go somewhere else. You have 100,000 people there, I as owner of my store have a big box (Future Shop) a local chain Madman Mckay, another independant Alpine dealer, and my own store, all in a town of 30,000 people. Imagine how many deals I have to give out.Top Secret, I can tell you but then my wife will kill me.