Buying used rMBP - Warranty unregistered, sellers usually have no original receipt..?

[troy14]

Hi everyone,

I am in the market for a used rMBP as i'll let someone else take the depreciation hit... however I do want one with some remaining warranty. Lately i've found quite a few where the warranty was unregistered and it seems the seller has no idea where an original receipt was to verify the 1 year warranty.

Is there anything I can do? I don't want to purchase a laptop if I would be screwed with the warranty. I know it's easy to say "just buy a different laptop" but i've found quite a few with the exact specs I want but ran into the warranty issue (but should have a warranty as they were late '13 or '14 models)

 

[maflynn]

I suppose you can check apple's site with the serial number. Its quite possible the seller isn't the original owner and so he may not have the original receipt or when it was bought exactly.

On the other topic of buying new vs.used. We're not talking about cars, where the car drops in value, by a huge amount as soon as you drive off the lot.

Depreciation is not something that I think that should be part of the purchase matrix, rather find specs that fit your needs and buy that computer - just my $.02

 

[chrfr]

Hi everyone,

I am in the market for a used rMBP as i'll let someone else take the depreciation hit... however I do want one with some remaining warranty.

Don't rule out a refurbished computer from the online Apple Store.

 

[redheeler]

On the other topic of buying new vs.used. We're not talking about cars, where the car drops in value, by a huge amount as soon as you drive off the lot.

Depreciation is not something that I think that should be part of the purchase matrix, rather find specs that fit your needs and buy that computer - just my $.02

On the contrary, the value of a new computer can decrease by about $150 as soon as you take it out of the box. If I didn't like that new Mac smell so much (or decided against ordering one on launch day) I'd let someone else take the hit as well.

 

[troy14]

I suppose you can check apple's site with the serial number. Its quite possible the seller isn't the original owner and so he may not have the original receipt or when it was bought exactly.

On the other topic of buying new vs.used. We're not talking about cars, where the car drops in value, by a huge amount as soon as you drive off the lot.

Depreciation is not something that I think that should be part of the purchase matrix, rather find specs that fit your needs and buy that computer - just my $.02

Thanks maflynn for the reply, however, that is exactly what I'm talking about. I AM checking the Apple website, and it is showing that there is no verified purchase date, and with an original (or even current) owner having no record of the original sale, is there any other way to get a warranty status? I talked to Apple and of course all they said was pretty much a flat "no" without any effort or thinking. Probably to cover their butts.

However, with the used market, they do depreciate quite a bit, and I have looked into refurbished. 13" rMBP can be had on eBay for ~1k-1100 USD with the 8gb ram and 250GB SSD. Since they go for $1499 + tax new, that is an absolute substantial savings...if I can get a similar machine for that much savings, why wouldn't I?