Disappearing (and re-appearing) Refurbished Kindles

Now you see them and now you don't. Most of the time when you check the Amazon web site, the refurbished Kindles are out of stock (but there are some "used" and "new" ones being sold by third parties, for about $200 more, for those that must have one under the tree). However, that doesn't mean that Amazon is out of the refurbished units completely. Readers of this blog have snagged 30 refurbished Kindles this month, after they supposedly sold out last weekend. The trick is to set up one-click shopping and to keep refreshing the page, then pounce when one hits inventory. Yesterday, there were confirmed sightings (and quick buys) at approximate 2:30 PM, 3:15 PM, 9:30 PM and another this morning at 7:45 AM. And that's just the ones that I know about, so many more may have hit inventory for a few minutes and then been snapped up. In case you are away from your bookmarked link, remember you can check from any compuer using the shortcut www.tinyurl.com/RefurbKindle.

For those not in a huge hurry and not wanting to spend $200 to $1,200 above list price, you can still buy a new Kindle and wait for delivery - although current estimates put that into February of next year, several have already reported getting some of the late December deliveries shipped this week. Speculation is that a lot of these are from cancellations of new units by those who managed to snag one of the refurbished Kindles, but no one knows for sure. If the true backlog is batteries, as has long been speculated, perhaps Amazon managed to get production of those faster than anticipated. And perhaps they decided after last year's indefinte wait and no shipping time for back orders caused a lot of complaints, that this year they would simply make up a date and push it so far into the future that they would have no problem delivering them ahead of schedule.