Features

There's no Denying that the Internet has been good for consumers. It's now so easy to compare prices that you don't have to worry about paying over the odds. On the other hand, there's something slightly frustrating about the way online shopping has become so ubiquitous. Now that everyone's doing it, it's increasingly hard to find those well kept secrets that every bargain hunter hopes for - websites known only to the cognoscenti, where incredible prices bring the products of your dreams within reach of your budget. And if you do stumble across an offer that seems too good to be true, you can't help wondering if you might find that's exactly what it is.

We'd like to introduce you to an exception to this rule. There are companies - often well established and very reputable ones - that sell computers at lower prices than anyone else.These computers aren't second-hand; at least, not in the usual sense. Many of them, in fact, are brand new, straight from the factory, packed and boxed, the same as the units on the shelves of your local computer shop or in the warehouse of your favourite online store. And the rest lie somewhere in between.

Where do these cut-price products come from? Are they really just as good as brand new? How much less do they cost, and is it safe to buy them? We set out to answer all these questions with the help of the people who ought to know: the refurb vendors.

The meaning of refurb

Most (but not all) of the products we're talking about can be

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described as refurbs, short for 'refurbished'. 'Reconditioned' is another way to put it. You may have seen the term in adverts and wondered what it meant. It turns out to mean a wide variety of things, some of which you might not have expected.

Europc (www.europc.co.uk) has been selling refurbished computers for more than a decade, and was named in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 list as the fastest growing private company in Scotland. It's been described as an 'Internet thrift shop' for PCs, although that's a bit tongue-in-cheek: with a 30,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Glasgow, a new retail showroom round the corner from IKEA, and an annual turnover of around $25 million, it's a pretty high-tech thrift shop. Dale Cumming, who founded the company, told us about the nature of its stock.

'Much of what we sell is "as new", units that have come back in and been fully factory refurbished.' OK, but where exactly do they come from? If you ever suspected there might be something a bit shady about reconditioned goods, the truth is reassuringly dull. 'They're usually sold to us directly by the original maker. We work directly with manufacturers such as Dell, who refurbish products in their own factories, and we also remanufacture systems ourselves for other companies.'

Not only are the systems tested, repaired, checked and repackaged just like new, but they're still not far off new when Europc puts them back on sale. 'It's mainly current product or no more than six months old.'

Dead or alive

So why - and how - do these machines end up back in the factory? We discussed this with another significant player, PC Interworks, whose website, buyit247.co.uk, is a popular source of discount computers. The company has come up with its own terminology for some of the key aspects of the trade, as PC Interworks' Ben Frain explained to Computer Buyer. 'Reverse logistics is the process of dealing with returned goods. It's about maximising profit for the manufacturer, but it's also about minimising waste.