B Stock

[MOFO Pro]

The thing about B-stock is that there's a lot of places out there that don't differentiate between it and "refurbished" gear. B-stock should be open-box returns, scratch/dent, that kind of thing. Refurbs are the crap that comes back because it's broken, then it's fixed at the lowest possible cost and sent back out onto the floor.

B-stock is usually a pretty good risk. I've had very few problems over the years.

Refurbs are typically a very poor risk. There's a reason why they didn't work in the first place, and you can bet that the retailer spent as little time and money fixing it as humanly possible. I'd avoid them like the plague.

Learn to ask the retailer whether it's *really* B-stock or whether that's code language for "refurbished".

Frank

The terms are often confused in all retail environments... very frequently refurbished is actually what you describe as B Stock... opened box. And I doubt you meant retailer when you referenced repair... I would think some manufacturer's would actually run a more extensive QC on a refurb than a fresh production unit... It's hard to say, depends on the manufacturer.

Buying anything now-a-days is a crap shoot, so if the rewards justify it, I'll take the longer odds

 

[Weasel9992]

The terms are often confused in all retail environments... very frequently refurbished is actually what you describe as B Stock... opened box. And I doubt you meant retailer when you referenced repair... I would think some manufacturer's would actually run a more extensive QC on a refurb than a fresh production unit... It's hard to say, depends on the manufacturer.

Buying anything now-a-days is a crap shoot, so if the rewards justify it, I'll take the longer odds

No, I really meant retailer...I'm thinking more along the lines of some of the bigger guys who'd have a repair shop on site. The same idea would be true if it were the vendor though.

Refurbs are *supposed* to be very strictly defined as items that came in DOA and were "refurbished" either by the retailer or by the vendor, then resold. You're right though...those terms get mixed around quite a bit.

Frank

 

[bongolation]

I've never had problems with B-stock/Refurb.

What they are exactly and what the terms mean varies widely, even at the same retailer.

Where you see a lot of these are when there's been a bad production run of the product and tons have come back from the dealers or are recalled unshipped. They're fixed and moved as B-stock. When that happens, you'll see one model in a very large amount at several big retailers. That seems to have happened recently with the BBE 362. There were incredibly big numbers of these everywhere as "B-stock." Only that one model. I got one from MF for $41 after some discounts. It was as new -- new box, factory wrapped, etc. -- just had whatever was wrong with that production run repaired.

There were also huge numbers (thousands!) of Ampeg B-200Rs B-stocks because of a speaker rattle problem caused by improper mounting in the initial production run. They had a giant backlog of warranty-replaced and recalled stock of these and when they got the rattle secured on them they had huge numbers they had to dump.

Etc., etc.