Everyone wants to save money these days and one of the ways that seems to be popping up is to buy a refurbished treadmill. If you look, you’ll see them everywhere.
But what does refurbished really mean? When a factory refurbishes a treadmill what exactly do they do and how close to new is it when they are done?
Well, I’m going to dive in to these and many other questions to help dispel myths as well as to keep you from getting a worn out treadmill that has been “refurbished” by the factory, but really hasn’t been.
The problem with buying a refurbished treadmill is that there is no industry standard about what refurbishing actually includes. The cold hard fact is that every company determines on its own what they do to “refurbish” a piece of equipment. This is the case with everything labeled as refurbished from electronics to exercise equipment, from bikes to televisions and cell phones.
I’m going to give you what I’ve found to be true when it comes to buying not just refurbished treadmills but any kind of refurbished equipment.
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As a good rule of thumb, this is what you can expect. The quality of the refurbishing job is directly related to the company’s position in the market. If they pride themselves on top quality and have a strong brand name known for a solid product they will take refurbishing very seriously.
But if they are a discount seller and quality is not their most important company value, they are simply interested in restoring how their product looks and not how it operates.
To give you more detail, a top quality company will take a holistic approach to refurbished treadmills. Because they want only top quality, well performing units in the marketplace, they will replace every component or anything that has even minor signs of use.
When these companies are finished with their refurbishing, the treadmill is literally a new treadmill, but they can’t call it that because it has the same serial number as it did when it was sent into the factory to be reworked.
They will replace the motors, the electronics, the belt, the deck, the heart rate monitor, the grips, any bolts that show wear and they may even repaint the unit.
On the other side, if the company is strictly a discount provider of treadmills, they will only replace the components of the refurbished treadmill that make it look used. Of course they will check to make sure it operates within the specifications, but they are not as focused on operation as they are in making the unit look like its new.
So if you are considering jumping into the world of refurbished treadmills the only safe thing is to contact the manufacturer that you are interested in and get the specifics from them about what they do when they refurbish a unit.
If you don’t do this, you will be making a lot of assumptions and could be very disappointed when you get your refurbished treadmill home only to find that it doesn’t look like you expected it to and it doesn’t run like it should.
What’s worse is that the longer you run it, the more things you’ll find are wrong with it. The non-quality focused companies know how to hide operational flaws until the warranty has expired and then its up to you to pay for the repairs.
The rule of thumb when buying refurbished equipment of any kind including refurbished treadmills is to only buy the equipment manufactured by top companies known for high quality. This is one way you can be assured of getting a top quality unit at a great price. And what’s better is that you’re friends will never know you paid such a low price for it!