In truth, I got the deal of the century. Long story, but I bought my refurbished early 2011 17" 2.2Ghz MBP last April for $1100 on closeout from Microcenter (they had a huge stock of them). I bought Apple Care, maxed the memory and bought an SSD. I had the logic board fail three times since January (CRU requires three major repairs before they will swap it), in addition to the keyboard failing. I called Apple and said I wasn't happy and expected better and upon review of my account the senior support guy gave me two options: have Apple repair the machine again if I wanted to keep the 17 or replace it with a base 2015 15 with a 1GB SSD upgrade, since the 17" came with a 750GB HD and they replace like for like. Initially I didn't accept that because I need the discrete GPU but they wouldn't budge, and the Iris Pro graphics aren't much worse than the Radeon 6750 anyway.
I agreed to the swap, but when they called back the next day to setup the transfer, they had upgraded me to a model with both the SSD upgrade and the Radeon GPU. If it had been in store, they likely would have replaced it with a maxed out 2.8/1TB/GPU on the spot (they did for someone else here), but I essentially ended up with a $3000 notebook for $1100. On top of that, since i didn't transfer the Applecare (never do that... the original end date applies even if it is a day later, and you can't renew it), they refunded the difference for the unused portion.
The key is to have had multiple major replacements, then speak to a senior service provider over the phone or a genius at the store and express how disappointed you are that a $3000 computer has given you this much trouble, repeatedly. Be nice, don't blame anyone and you never know what can happen.
