Mac Mall and open box

[Bob Coxner]

I'm wondering if anyone has experience buying open box Macs from Mac Mall? Any problems with adding Applecare on open box? Any reports of the condition of what your received? Any difficulty with returning it and who pays for the return? Mac Mall customer service in general? (I do read some negative comments elsewhere) The prices are very tempting but I want to know in advance what I'm getting into.

Here is their fine print:

Open Box Product. Open box items are goods that have been returned from our customers after they opened the box. This prevents us from selling the item as new, and we end up having to drastically reduce the price. Once our warehouse receives an opened return unit, it is inspected by our certified technicians. You end up with a high-quality product at a significant discount. Quantities of open box products are limited. Back orders are not accepted on open box products. There is a 15 day return period for open box products if you are not completely satisfied.

 

[nhcowboy1]

No personal experience, but my understanding is that the one-year warranty would date from the original date of purchase (by the prior customer), so you'd lose a good bit of your warranty. If it were me, I'd never buy without checking the warranty info for the item's serial number. Don't know if you'd be able to do that, but I wouldn't want to take a chance if I couldn't.

What I was told, when I called Apple customer service with the same question, was that if they don't have a record of the original purchase date, all they can do is go by the date they shipped the item to that retailer - they add 3 mos. to that date and that becomes your "purchase" date for purposes of warranty. If the original sale was properly recorded and transmitted to Apple, you'd be okay . . . but if it wasn't, then you'd be stuck with the "ship date + 3 mos." date, and who knows when that might have been!