Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Electrical and electronic topics for small boats
Jefecinco
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Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Postby Jefecinco » Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:28 am

Right now on the Raymarine site there is a good price on a refurbished RAY 70 VHF Marine Band radio with internal GPS receiver and AIS receiver.
Butch

jimh
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Re: Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Postby jimh » Mon Nov 27, 2017 6:34 pm

Can you provide a URL that leads directly to the offer? It is much better to give a URL to a resource you want to talk about than to rely on readers figuring out where on the connected internet they can find the information.

What is the MSRP of the radio?

What is the normal street price for a new radio?

What is the offered price for a refurbished model from Raymarine?

Jefecinco
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Re: Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Postby Jefecinco » Tue Nov 28, 2017 10:19 am

Jim - The requested URL is http://www.raymarine.com/store/refurbished/ the entire refurbished lineup is listed so the user will have to scroll down the page a ways to find the radios.
Butch

jimh
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Re: Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Postby jimh » Tue Nov 28, 2017 10:59 am

To answer my own questions:

What is the MSRP of the RAY 70 radio? $700

What is the normal street price for a new RAY 70 radio? $675

What is the offered price for a refurbished RAY 70 radio from Raymarine? $500

You can point directly to the refurbished RAY 70 radio offer from Raymarine with the URL:

http://www.raymarine.com/store/refurbished/ray70/

jimh
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Re: Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Postby jimh » Tue Nov 28, 2017 1:18 pm

When an electronics manufacturer offers its own products at a discount because the devices have been remanufactured, I am generally in a confused state. Typically an electronics manufacturer would offer its own products at a discount price as remanufactured products when it was getting a lot of returns under warranty of its new products from customers who bought the products at regular retail stores. That suggests to me that the manufacturer has poor quality control and was producing a significant volume of products that failed soon after being purchased, and those customers received a new device to replace the failed device.

On the other hand, even very highly regarded manufacturers like Apple offer refurbished products, but in that instance I have to think that the enormous volume of production means that even at 99.999percent defect free, producing a billion devices would result in a 10,000 defective devices.

I am quite certain that the production volume of VHF Marine Band radios is no where near the volume of a billion units and also that the production quality is probably not quite 99.990-percent defect free.

Another possible cause for returned new products: dumb users. Modern electronics are more sophisticated than many of the people that buy them, which leads to difficulty for the owners to operate the devices. This could also cause some products to be returned, not due to defect in the product, but due to defect in the user--who can't figure out how to use them.

Jefecinco
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Re: Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Postby Jefecinco » Tue Nov 28, 2017 7:38 pm

Raymarine has a pretty good reputation for producing reliable products. They also have a reputation for being liberal when it comes to warranty support. I would always buy a refurbished product before a brand new one if available. My own experience in supervising a couple of electronics shops is that repaired products received rigorous and through testing to include operational testing before being released to the customer. I'm told that typically electronics assembly line quality control is usually confined to the "sampling" method where perhaps one in a dozen or more finished products are subjected to operational testing.

I hate to admit it but, here goes. When I bought a Raymarine Dragonfly MFD last year I was unable to make it power up. I tested the power cable several times with the same result. Power from the battery was reaching the MFD plug end of the power plug. I emailed Raymarine and was told they would ship me a new unit that day and they gave me a Return Authorization Number to return my unit to them. The replacement unit would not power up. In a few minutes I discovered I was simply not pushing the power cord fully into the MFD. It has performed flawlessly ever since. Oops!
Butch

jimh
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Re: Good deal on Raymarine Radio

Postby jimh » Tue Nov 28, 2017 9:15 pm

BUTCH--the problem might have really been poor design. If the connector needed unusually high pressure to insert, the connector may be at fault, not the user. Since you have lengthy experience with electronics, you probably were and are acquainted with the sort of pressure usually needed to insert a connector into its mating receptacle. Particularly with a new device, just out of the box, it is prudent to be cautious about how much pressure you apply to parts during assembly.