Amazon Renewed now sell as new refurbished products

Amazon are making a play for what’s traditionally been eBay’s territory – used by like new refurbished products.

For many years eBay has been the defacto place to shop when you want a lightly used or returned product, which might not just be good as new but actually new, at a bargain price. Sometimes it’s a customer return but the box is damaged or missing, other times it’s when a customer exchanges a product for an upgrade. Either way it’s a good way to save money and now it’s a business that Amazon want’s in on.

Amazon Renewed

Known as “Amazon Renewed”, you can now shop for certified refurbished, pre-owned and open-box products on Amazon. The name is pretty clever, why call it ‘used’, ‘refurbished’ or ‘2nd hand’ when you can call it reNEWed? This is Amazon setting out from the start to reassure customers that they’re not about to buy junk, but quality products which will have been tested and certified to work and look like-new, backed with a separate 1 year warranty in the EU (minimum 90 day warranty for our friends in the US) and priced to be attractive compared to buying an actual new item.

Amazon say that only select Marketplace sellers and vendors (and of course Amazon themselves) who maintain a high quality and performance bar may offer Certified Refurbished products. This isn’t a quick polish and re-box job, the refurbishment process typically includes a full diagnostic test, replacement of any defective parts, a thorough cleaning and inspection process, and repackaging by the seller or vendor.

The product ships with all relevant accessories, and is backed by a separate 1-year limited warranty by the Marketplace seller, the manufacturer, a third-party refurbisher or in case of products sold by Amazon by the vendor (in addition to normal statutory rights).

Largely the products on offer are computing, consumer electronics, watches, gaming and smartphones, although there are a smattering of products across other categories. You’ll instantly recognise an Amazon Renewed listing as it’ll have ‘(Certified Refurbished)’ at the end of the title.

It’s unlikely that smaller retailers will get in on the Amazon Renewed bandwagon, Amazon appear to have some pretty stringent checks in place to ensure that sellers really are capable of refurbishing products to an as new standard. The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that some products have a disclaimer to say that all of the accessories (power suppliers, headsets etc) may not be from a third party source instead of the original manufacturer.