How does the refurb pricing work?

[vsp]

I've been watching the MB and MBP pricing lately and have seen discounts ranging from 12% to 41% (!!). Does anyone have an idea of what goes into Apple's pricing scheme here? There doesn't seem to be a direct correlation between age of the system and pricing discount, but I'm not positive on that.
Does the discount have more to do with what type of work was needed to get the maching into operating order?

Or perhaps it involves cosmetic flaws?

I'm hoping it's a somewhat random whim of an Apple employee in the repair department and the one who priced the laptop at 41% off didn't get fired over it

Can't see any reason not to buy a refurb, especially after searching through these boards. Sounds like a very high ratio of happy customers.

 

[madmaxmedia]

I've never heard of an refurb Mac from Apple that wasn't in mint condition, so I doubt its due to cosmetic shape.

The variable margin/discount is probably due to internal factors such as how many refurbs Apple has in stock for a particular model, expected sales rates at different price points, etc.

I bought a 1.83 Core Duo MacBook for $799, and couldn't be happier. It even came with a full 1 GB of memory, instead of the listed 512MB. That's like another $80 discount on top of the refurb price.

Plus the 1-year warranty is worth a lot, compared to say buying from EBay (of course, you might still have warranty period on a used Mac.)

 

[gnasher729]

I've been watching the MB and MBP pricing lately and have seen discounts ranging from 12% to 41% (!!). Does anyone have an idea of what goes into Apple's pricing scheme here? There doesn't seem to be a direct correlation between age of the system and pricing discount, but I'm not positive on that.

The rebate is calculated from the original price the computer was sold at, not from the price that it would be worth if you bought it brand new today.

For example, you could have bought a top-of-the-range MacBook Pro a year ago for $1999, and you can buy a top-of-the-range MacBook Pro today for $1999. The one you buy today has a faster processor, more memory, bigger harddisk, so it's worth more money. You might get the old one for $1199 (40 percent rebate) and the new one for $1699 (15 percent rebate), that just reflects their value today.

 

[OllyW]

The 10-20% discounts are usually on current models, with the higher reductions on older models which are no longer available.

In the UK refurb store there is 15 or 16% off Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros and between 30 - 41% off Core Duo models.