would you buy a refurb laptop?

[fuse]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230230

its very nicely spec'd for the price..

I've had such good luck with computer hardware the past few years that I am really thinking about tempting the refurb fate here...I suppose its rolling the dice, like anything else.



where do you all typically buy laptops? I don't really know where else to look

[F-Trooper05]

My Macbook was refurbed and I haven't had any problems with it in the few years that I've had it. Although I got it directly from Apple, so I had a little more confidence in it...

[TGS]

Don't buy from Newegg.com.

I bought my current laptop from them. Tons of problems with getting it shipped and the order being lost. Horrible CS....they hung up on me or just didn't answer the phone. emails would go unanswered or they'd respond back with a form letter and nothing would happen. After a week of the in-stock computer not being shipped, I filed a BBB complaint and threatened with legal action (I didn't use a CC, so I couldn't just dispute the charges). It still took 3 days to ship after that.

Horrible. Never shop with newegg.com, and use a CC.......those were my lessons.

As to refurbs, a lot of them don't come from the manufacturer and so the warranty among them will vary wildly, so be sure to look at that as they come from strange, never-before-heard-of companies and not name brands. In January of 2011 I was looking for a laptop that could do gaming, but wasn't really looking for other luxuries, so refurbs didn't really do what I wanted. I ended up buying a brand new Acer and have been really happy with it......

Nvidia GT540m 1gb graphics card, i3 2.53ghz processor, 4gb memory, Windows 7 for just over $600, but wrapped in a simplistic, crappy case with no cool features and the worst speaker on any laptop I've seen. Still, for what I wanted, it was an awesome deal....a month later they released the same exact computer but with a better matched processor for gaming, the i5 2.66 ghz with boost to 2.93ghz. Still, I can play Assassins Creed and other games I like on medium to max graphics settings....

We've got a G4 Macbook and Snow White 500mhz iMac if you want them. They still work :) You get a non-working 333mhz strawberry iMac and 60mhz Mac Performa 475 (160mb hard-drive!!!) with them as a bonus.

[LOKNLOD]

I have a Dell laptop I bought in 2006, as a refurb from their outlet, and it is still kicking. Battery is long toast, and the screen is almost broken off (it kinda flops loosely and one of the hinges is breaking away from the body) but it runs pretty well considering it's been abused. And it was not a "top of the line" model at the time, by any means. It stays plugged in in the living room as the "oh i wanna check something real quick" computer.

I wouldn't be afraid of a refurb from a known source.

[JV_]

I buy a ton of computer stuff from new egg and have always been happy with the transaction.

-Sent using Tapatalk.

[RoyGBiv]

I've had nothing but good experience with NewEgg...
But I'll agree strongly with TGS that you need to be careful about WHO refurbed the computer and/or what is the warranty.

If you're getting a solid warranty (minimum 90 days) or even better a full mfr. warranty (typically 1 year), I would not be too worried about a refurb on an otherwise well-reviewed computer. Looks like the one you linked is a 90 day warranty from ASUS...

I bought two Acer refurb laptops last year from Fry's... Sent one to Mom and one for keeping in the kitchen (very handy). Excellent deals. Use them every day.

IMO, YMMV

[fuse]

I buy a ton of computer stuff from new egg and have always been happy with the transaction.

-Sent using Tapatalk.

yeah, I've built 3 computers and counting almost exclusively from parts bought at newegg. sorry you had a bad experience, Tyler.

[TGS]

yeah, I've built 3 computers and counting almost exclusively from parts bought at newegg. sorry you had a bad experience, Tyler.

I had built a computer in 07 using parts all from New Egg, without trouble. After I had the trouble with them in 2011 I went searching for reviews to see if it's common, and I found a ton of horrible reviews with experiences similar to mine. Not just usual screw ups..everything I saw that was negative, was really negative. When I started talking to my techie friends about it, they all nodded their heads and said, "Yeah......that sounds about right."

So it seems like when something goes wrong, they just don't do anything about it.......unlike most companies who will have screw ups, they at least assign someone to fix the problem. When something drops through the cracks with New Egg, they don't bother to make it right. They just let your order sit unfulfilled while they have your money....and the people who do respond just say something to make you happy and never actually do anything with the order.

[secondstoryguy]

Apples refurbs are GTG. I used one for years before my current Macbook and it had no problems. If you know someone who is in school or a teacher you can also get about 10-15% of an educational discount.

[UNK]

Around here Staples has the best deal

[JRL]

I don't really think this is a good deal, but that's just opinion.

I've never had much of a problem with Newegg, but Amazon also has great prices and policies

I would watch and aggregation site like http://dealnews.com/c49/Computers/Laptops/ and wait for a good deal. Sandy Bridge i5 or better, 4GB+ RAM, 500/6000 series gfx card if you want to game or something similar.

[tremiles]

It's an 18 month old computer. The hybrid dual graphics card is adequate for decoding high def video but modern games at all but the lowest detail settings will be choppy at best. If the battery goes bad, it will run about 150 to replace. I like small form factor laptops because I haul them around for work, but if you're using them as a primary computer, you make alot of sacrifices.

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

[jslaker]

I had built a computer in 07 using parts all from New Egg, without trouble. After I had the trouble with them in 2011 I went searching for reviews to see if it's common, and I found a ton of horrible reviews with experiences similar to mine. Not just usual screw ups..everything I saw that was negative, was really negative. When I started talking to my techie friends about it, they all nodded their heads and said, "Yeah......that sounds about right."

So it seems like when something goes wrong, they just don't do anything about it.......unlike most companies who will have screw ups, they at least assign someone to fix the problem. When something drops through the cracks with New Egg, they don't bother to make it right. They just let your order sit unfulfilled while they have your money....and the people who do respond just say something to make you happy and never actually do anything with the order.

I'll just say that your experience is out of the norm. I do tens of thousands of dollars of business with Newegg a year. They're usually pretty good about getting things straightened out when the rare mistake happens.

[TGS]

or not......

Better Business Bureau: Newegg (http://www.la.bbb.org/business-reviews/Computer-Equipment-Parts-and-Supplies-Retail/Newegg-Inc-in-Whittier-CA-13146135)

People don't usually file a complaint with BBB when the company has a habit of getting things sorted out on their own.

There's also similar experiences to mine reported on Trustlink, so I'm definitely no alone in this. The fact that the computer system is able to process most packages does not mean their CS is good......it just means you haven't been able to experience their CS yet.

BTW, as you noted, you spend tens of thousands of dollars with them. You think they're not going to give you extra focus? I'd love to hear of any vendor that shits on someone who spends tens of thousands with them annually.

And "closing" the complaint doesn't necessarily mean they fixed what was wrong, either. More likely is the customer got fed up with going back and forth and having to respond to form letters, and if you don't keep doing that it automatically is considered resolved.

I'm glad ya'll haven't had a problem with Newegg.com. Let me know how you feel when you become one of the people that do have a problem. I hope they burn to the ground. Every single Newegg CS employee I dealt with was absolutely useless as a human being.

ETA: I'm not just talking about a problem. All companies will have a problem every once in a while. I looked up my BBB complaint and here's what happened:
1) Billed, but not shipped within 4 business days.
2) Spoke to 3 CS associates over 2 days who said they upgraded it to next day air to make up for lost time, and that it would be shipped within a few hours.
3) package never shipped, per UPS it never made it into their hands. Newegg must start a complaint with UPS in order to figure out where the package is, I can not initiate it.
4) Newegg refuses to start a complaint with UPS and states it was shipped, even though both UPS CS and UPS online tracking both state only a shipping label was created.
5) Days later, after filing a complaint with BBB, it finally ships a week and a half after ordering.

You want to tell me that's just an odd occurrence? It wasn't just a problem that wasn't fixed by one Newegg CS associate. It was ongoing in two work weeks, with multiple (4 I have documented by name) CS associates. They even outright refused to look into the problem. That's a widespread corporate culture problem, not an isolated incident.

[jslaker]

BTW, as you noted, you spend tens of thousands of dollars with them. You think they're not going to give you extra focus? I'd love to hear of any vendor that shits on someone who spends tens of thousands with them annually.

Those are my business accounts. I do my personal buying separately, at a far lower dollar amount.


All companies will have a problem every once in a while.

Well, especially when you're doing over $2.5B in revenue per year and the only larger online retailer in the US is Amazon.

It sucks that you had a bad experience, but I'd suggest you're suffering from a bit of confirmation bias as a result. I'm not sure how linking to an A+ BBB rating is supposed to prove poor CS, for example. I do know that working in IT, nearly everyone I know uses and generally trusts Newegg. Amazon is probably about the only other vendor I know that comes close to being as universally liked.

But at any rate, this is kind of dragging the thread off-topic.

[jmjames]

Refurbs (speaking as someone who used to work at a help desk for a hardware maker) are hit or miss. It all depends on:

1. Why it was returned in the first place. Some things get returned because they didn't like it, or it was a software issue... that's no worries. If it was a hardware issue, who knows if the refurb process detected it and fixed it?
2. The refurber's logistic chain. If a unit keeps coming back, do they detect it and junk it, or keep recycling it through?
3. The refurber's process. How rigorous is their problem detection and correction?

I can tell you from personal experience that many companies have a very poor refurb system. Motorola, for example, sent me 5 DOA cell phones in a row. The hardware maker I used to work for was awful, the serial numbers on units wouldn't change, so folks would call in with their S/N and we'd often see units that had been returned 3, 4 times... a few had been through the system well over TWENTY times, for the exact same issue! I've had many refurb hard drives that lasted just as long (or longer) than brand new units typically do. I've seen refurbs that were essentially "scratch 'n dent" with no issues in the slightest. It's totally hit or miss. For me personally, I avoid refurbs because there's such a high chance of it being a mess, and you are basically at the mercy of customer service if it doesn't work out well.

J.Ja