"CCred68046" wrote in message
...
I cant
help but notice almost everywhere I look has refurbished Minn Kotas for
sale.
Whats up with that? Are they junk? Why would so many be refurbs? ...



There are several differnt reasons why a company would end up with a large
number of "refurbished" units. Most of the time, the units are brand new,
but for some reason they can't sell them as new. Here are a few reasons
why:

1) The product was shipped, and then the manufacturer discovered a defect
that needs to be corrected. There may be thousands of these units in
wharehouses and distributors that the manufacturer calls back. Some times
the problem is in the unit itself, and they have to open it up and fix
something. Sometimes they simply didn't include some warning sticker, or
failed to mention 25 times in the manual that spinning propellers can be
dangerous!

2) It is common for a manufacturer to sell their product under a differnt
brand name. For example, XYZ Bigname Store might slap their name on a motor
made by Minn Kota. Min Kota makes thousands of units that say XYZ Bigname
on them, and then XYZ decides that they don't want to sell that model of
trolling motors anymore and makes Minn Kota a deal that they will sell this
other model if they take back all the inventory of the first model. Minn
Kota gets all these units back, replaces the lables, puts them in new boxes
and sells them again. Except technically they can't sell them as new
because they had already been sold to XYZ.

3) There is always a flow of inventory between the manufacturer and the
consumer. From the factory units will go into shipping, and can take a
couple of weeks to ship across the ocean. Then they get trucked to some
place like Texas as a major distribution point. Then they get sent out to
the various distribution points for the major outlets and for the second
tier distribution points for the smaller stores. Then they get into
inventory of the major outlets.

Then the manufacturer changes the model. It is essentially the same unit,
except the old one was 50 pounds of thrust and the new ones have 55 pounds
of thrust. They are both the same price. Which would you buy? The stores
bitch, the manfucturer takes back all the 50 pound units and sells them
again.

So, a refurbished unit could be brand new, never been used.


Rod McInnis