Refurbs are the result of devices that fail or fail easily.
Seems to me, this tablet is solid.
I dont see a source in the near future. Your a going to save $50 at most anyway. Getting it used on ebay is about $250. They have a high resale value because they are durable. If you want to get something used that is a tablet and is a steal. I recommend getting a used eee transformer. The eee has a vibrant hacking community that will guarantee updates beyond ice cream sandwich as well be quicker to getting updated to ICS as well.
This tablet will take longer to get ICS because it uses a sense overlay and ICS made Sense useless basically Therefore HTC has to spend alot of time making useless sense useful.