SPECIAL NOTE – In addition to anything and everything really look at the deals from DeWalt on Renewed today.  I mean there are some okay ones, some so so ones and some amazing ones, but above all there is a ton of DeWalt Renewed Inventory there right now.

Instead of an item of the day today I want to give you a tip most people just don’t utilize, that is shop Amazon ReNewed especially for things like power tools, small appliances and electronics.  This tip can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars over time.

Let me explain what renewed means vs. what people think it means.  Let’s start with what most people think it means…..

• What people think happens – Bill buys a cordless drill, the drill has a warranty and he uses it for a while.  The drill in someway “breaks” while Bill has it before the warranty expires.  Bill sends it back and Amazon repairs it and sells it used.  You are buying an item that failed and was fixed.

• What actually happens – Bill buys a drill, the drill arrives and may be it has a battery that is bad, may be Bill’s wife said, “you don’t need another drill”, may be Bill decided he wanted a better drill or cheaper one.  So Bill uses Amazon’s very liberal return policy and sends it back.   Amazon pays someone to check it and make sure it works, repackage it and then they sell it at a discount.

Translation Amazon can’t sell these items as new but effectively they are fricken new.  I want you to think about this, go look at the Amazon ReNewed Store, look at the vast array of items they sell.  Look at the price points and ask yourself if you think it would be profitable for Amazon to be taking about 50 dollar Bluetooth Speaker or 20 dollar food processors that are actually used and repair them only to sell them at a discount?

Here is what is going on.  Amazon sells entire pallets of returned items site unseen to people.  Some people run entire businesses off this model and even put the “used/returned” items back on Amazon, some exclusively.  Amazon is also one of the most efficient and data driven companies on the planet.  So they have come up with certain items and classes of items that they know they can move as “ReNewed”.

Go into any pawn shop you will see big brand power tools in abundance.  Because they sell and hold value you can always sell a top end drill at a pawn shop because they know someone will always buy one, even beat to shit at a discount.

So you shouldn’t be surprised to see a TON of DeWalt, Rigid, Milwaukee, etc. tools in the Amazon ReNewed Store.  And if you dig in you will find it is mostly top brands in all categories that end up in the ReNewed store.  Craftsman, Ninja Kitchen Equipment, Kitchen Aid Mixers, you name it.  In every category there are mostly top high end brands, for one reason, they sell.  Amazon is cherry picking returned items for this program.  It is that simple.

Sometimes the discounts are massive.  Example I have been wanting a DeWalt Brushless Angle Grinder for a while.  The one I wanted sells for about 165 bucks, I got the “renewed” one under 90 bucks.  I was going to run it on the site and show but they only had 6 in stock.  I IM’d all my folks I knew who were DeWalt people and they were sold out in minutes.

This brings me to a few things to know….

• What you give up is the warranty, most items have a 90 Day Amazon warranty, vs. the standard manufactures warranty.
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• Not everything in the ReNewed store is deeply discounted or even discounted at all, always check for the exact same item for the new price.  If warranty is important to the item you should consider how deep the discount is.
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• You will at times find items in the ReNewed Store that are NOT really Amazon ReNewed.  I think this is actually a bit of a bug in Amazon’s Search Indexing System. Which matches items when they are not in Amazon Stock but with a 3rd party.  So if some item is not in Amazon stock but a pre owned version is sold by another Amazon seller you will get the typical “Available from X Sellers, click here for options”.  Be aware that all such sellers have their own policies and you need to know them before buying.  Also I find the discounts don’t seem so great with most of them, and many don’t have Amazon’s free shipping.
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• Inventory is subject to what is available at any given time.  One day there may be 50 Stand Mixers in the store, next day 3, then for months or more, none.  So it is more of an opportunistic thing to keep an eye on then something you can always expect to be there.

Oh and as you may imagine a few weeks after big holidays like Prime Days, Christmas, etc. is a good time to check inventory.  The more people impulse buy, the more they return.

But with that knowledge just look at it this way, Amazon did with returns what used car sellers have done the term used cars.  They changed it from used cars to “pre owned vehicles”.  In this case though you essentially have brand new gear that either had an accessory missing, the buyer changed their mind, etc.  So when you buy anything especially kitchen electronics, appliances, audio gear, power tools, etc.  Just check the Amazon ReNewed Store first, because you never know what you might find.

This is one way to easily make your money do more for you and remember what I say, if you don’t do that when you can, you hate money.  And if you hate money, it will hate you back!