Really? If I need a higher degree of certainty the part I
ordered is right and ready to deploy immediately, I avoid
refurbs, but on several occasions I've ordered refurbed
parts (hard to peg an exact number, but a few dozens of time
is a rough guess) and have had a roughly 80% success rate.
Occasionally there were missing parts, like when a
motherboard comes in an big kit with lots of fancy extras,
some of those were missing, or sometimes just the
motherboard I/O plate, or the mounting screws for an Alpha
Pal heatsink. Sometimes there's damage but it didn't really
matter (part still worked) like a video card with one of the
surface mount ceramic decoupling caps knocked off. Other
times it might be a card with a capacitor bent at an angle
which I thought prudent to remove and replace with another
cap. Sometimes refurbs are just the result of a
manufacturer making more of the main component (like a video
capture card) but not all the misc cables that go with it,
so if you just needed the vidcap card with it's tuner and
S-Video input, you didn't need the cables.
Nobody out there actually
repairs PC parts.
Actually, yes some video cards and motherboards are either
returned to the manufactuer or subcontracted out to someone
in the same region for repair. Certainly not all things
are, but remember that a large % of parts returned by
customers aren't even damaged, the customer simply didn't
have the ability to get the part working for any number of
reasons. Other times the return is for a more shady reason,
like a kid buying a CPU or video card then finding out it
didn't overclock as high as they'd hoped, and unfortunately
these kinds of customers end up changing policies and
causing more and more sellers to implement restocking fees.
All they do is put it in a box and
see if it works at all. They don't test it. They don't
care. AND ... !!!!!! .... they will rebox it and put it right
back out the door as new.
Some may test it, some might not even do that much, but
remember these parts do usually cost less. You save money
by taking on a potential problem and only through putting in
an amount of time it wouldn't be cost effective for the
seller to put forth, will you determine if you saved money
or have a product that must be returned. I suspect many
sellers do keep a record of whether an item was refurbished,
so it doesn't just keep getting set back out again and again
to different customers if it has been rejected more than
once.
The way these creeps
cover themselves, is twofold: 1) they make you
purchase a warranty after 15 days.
?? You must be taking about some specific sellers as this
is not typically the case at all at an *average* seller of
refurb'd goods.
And they don't
give an "in house" warranty.
A warranty is good for high priced items, but frankly I've
pretty much ignored warranties over the years and seldom did
it matter, if the refurb'd part arrived intact, working as
demonstrated by some functionality or stress tests, it
continued working. One exception might be hard drives, but
they are such a lottery anyway that a random sample can't be
presumed as bulletproof even if brand new/un-refurb'd.
2) they let you believe
that the manufacturers warranty is good, and you
will have to "call the manufacturer" for an RMA.
Then, you will discover that you are dealing with
a non-warranty item from the original designer
.... like ATI, or nVidia ... that was custom built
for an OFFSHORE RETAILER.
It depends on what you're buying. Also if you buy something
listed as a refurb'd retail, name brand part, it's not some
custom built offshore retailer (whatever you're trying to
imply). Normally there's no point in trying to refurb
something that isn't in demand, it has such a lot value it
ends up diverted to some surplus seller. The quality of the
seller, their reputation means a lot, especially how they
handle problems. Check out seller ratings at
http://www.resellerratings.com , but ignore the positive
reviews as any seller gets things right once in a while.
Instead focus on the negative reviews, whether they seem
credible and what (if any) hoops the seller made the
customer jump through and whether the customer's problem was
ever resolved.
The worst products
for this are made by ASUS.
I've bought several refurb'd Asus motherboards over the
years, and one of them acts flaky with a certain CPU
installed (which it wasn't meant to originally support) but
otherwise all were fine, except a couple didn't come with
the proprietary configuration, rear I/O shield. Annoyingly
at the time I contacted Asus to see about getting a matching
shield, they said they'd send it and took down my address
for shipping it but it never showed up. This was a free
part they offered though, nothing lost but I now look at the
rear ports and through a stack of I/O shields I have here
just to see if I have something suitable or adaptable if the
need arises. IIRC, they do sell the IO shields still, thing
it's about $5 for one, or around $25 for a whole motherboard
kit- but this was back when kits didn't have all the crazy
extras that some do today, the fanciest board kits might
cost more.
And if you want a
guaranteed refurb, buy a video card from XFX.
There are a few resellers who are reputable ( so
far ), and will try to help you with claims if you
get a bad product. Mwave is very good. NewEgg
is OK. TigerDirect will scam you any way it
can. Dell can be hard to work with or contact
but they are fair eventually. HP acts like they
are insulted if you try to do business with them
at all.
I agree with your assessment of the above companies, though
I've never had a problem with HP except they have a little
less friendly CSR policies IMO.
