Most items, certainly electronic ones, are getting cheaper all the time. Both in price and the build quality. The old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ is still as true today as it was the first time it was said. You can buy a nice little 16” LCD HDTV for £100, or less if you get it on sale. Many stores have great deals before special events.
People are always looking for great deals and will often put off a purchase until it goes on sale. Especially more expensive items like televisions and appliances. A TV for under £100 sounds great, but not everyone wants such a small one. Maybe for a child, but men want 40” plus. Sports just aren’t the same unless the players are at least half life sized. Action movies just don’t create the same enthusiasm unless you feel like you are part of the action. Add in surround sound and you have the ultimate TV viewing experience.
Discount electronic stores offer great deals every day. You can get almost any item for less than half the price of higher end stores that only sell new items. But what are you really getting? You are getting a product that was bought new at one of the other stores, found defective by the consumer, returned to the manufacturer and refurbished.
Refurbished items usually work fine initially. Whatever defect it had has been fixed. But, for some strange reason, these products seem to die within a few years. They last half as long as a product that was built right the first time. Unlike a rebuilt motor, where the entire thing is taken apart and rebuilt like new, with these products, only the reported problem gets fixed.
Whatever other issues might need sorting out within the device are never discovered and never fixed. You save a few hundreds pounds, but a few years later you are back at the shop buying another new TV. If you haven’t learned your lesson, you are back at the discount store. Either way, you are not saving. Whatever you’re buying, you tend to get what you pay for.
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