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MacBook Air on Craigslist

N

Nlynn527

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 5, 2012
134
3
This is my first thread so take it easy :)

I was browsing craigslist earlier when I came across an ad for a brand new Macbook air 11 inch for $600. I contacted the seller and he told me he had received two for Christmas and he was selling one of them. It was brand new, still had the plastic on it. He gave me the serial number, which I checked on Apple's website and it is under warranty until next December. I also called Apple and verified this information. He agreed to let me open it and test it out before buying it. I drove about 25 minutes and met him at his home. I opened it, turned it on, went through the initial setup menu and played around on it for a little. Everything looks legit. Did I just get lucky to find such a good deal or am I possibly missing something?
 
Nlynn527 said:
This is my first thread so take it easy :)

I was browsing craigslist earlier when I came across an ad for a brand new Macbook air 11 inch for $600. I contacted the seller and he told me he had received two for Christmas and he was selling one of them. It was brand new, still had the plastic on it. He gave me the serial number, which I checked on Apple's website and it is under warranty until next December. I also called Apple and verified this information. He agreed to let me open it and test it out before buying it. I drove about 25 minutes and met him at his home. I opened it, turned it on, went through the initial setup menu and played around on it for a little. Everything looks legit. Did I just get lucky to find such a good deal or am I possibly missing something?
Click to expand...

You got an awesome deal.
 
Since you met him at his home and are still typing, I would say that is one heck of a deal. Plus you contacted Apple and it was not reported stolen. But being invited to ones home seems pretty legit.

I hope you grabbed it for that is one great deal.
 
Spink10 said:
You got an awesome deal.
Click to expand...

I was hoping for this response, thanks! :)

Currently typing on it now.. love it so far! It will be a nice addiction to my family of Apple products.

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IngerMan said:
Since you met him at his home and are still typing, I would say that is one heck of a deal. Plus you contacted Apple and it was not reported stolen. But being invited to ones home seems pretty legit.

I hope you grabbed it for that is one great deal.
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I did. He actually gave me his neighbors address and met me outside at first but then invited me in. Just covering himself, which I completely understand.
 
Man it is good to hear people that get good deals on CL. That's how I picked up this new 13" loaded air for 1,300 I was so psyched. 600$?! that is awesome haha.
 
ajohnson253 said:
Man it is good to hear people that get good deals on CL. That's how I picked up this new 13" loaded air for 1,300 I was so psyched. 600$?! that is awesome haha.
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I was a little skeptical at first but even the girl from Apple's customer service said she would jump all over it.
 
Looks like a good deal especially if you have the computer on hand and you haven't been arrest yet.
 
id never go to someones house from craigs ad with 6 bills...but as your alive and got air..id say you won the lotto

but please meet craigs ad's at public location in future....
 
tom vilsack said:
id never go to someones house from craigs ad with 6 bills...but as your alive and got air..id say you won the lotto

but please meet craigs ad's at public location in future....
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Thanks for the concern. I didn't go alone. Took the boyfriend with me. :)
 
sounds like a great deal... but I want to be adopted into the family where someone gets TWO macbook air's for christmas!
 
Sounds like you got a great deal.

Where it starts to get fishy is if the seller were to say that they needed a wire transfer, or needed you to mail the money first because they were out of town, or start doing things other than the traditional "meet up, look it over, and hand over cash" deal.
 
notjustjay said:
Sounds like you got a great deal.

Where it starts to get fishy is if the seller were to say that they needed a wire transfer, or needed you to mail the money first because they were out of town, or start doing things other than the traditional "meet up, look it over, and hand over cash" deal.
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Agreed! I told him from the beginning that I wasn't buying it until I saw it working in person. At first he said no because it was still sealed and if I opened it and then decided I didn't want it he couldn't advertise it as new anymore. I told him I understood where he was coming from but that if he was being honest with me and it was a real working laptop in the box then we wouldn't have an issue and I would buy it. He agreed and everything worked fine.
 
Congrats!
Is that the base model (11/i5/2/64?)
That is (for me) $630 dollars in savings (13% tax!)
Great deal and enjoy :)
 
wrinkster22 said:
Congrats!
Is that the base model (11/i5/2/64?)
That is (for me) $630 dollars in savings (13% tax!)
Great deal and enjoy :)
Click to expand...

Yes it is the base model. It worked it to be about $460 in savings for me! We have 6% tax here.
 
So today I made a genius appointment at my local Apple store. I took the Air in and told them I had bought it on craigslist without really thinking it through and wanted to check to make sure everything was okay....

The genius took it apart, checked for water damage and everything else. He ran a diagnostic on it which came back fine and finally ran the serial number which came back clean as well... It was purchase on December 25 from Amazon. So looks like I got extremely lucky to find such an awesome deal! Thank you all for your input. :)
 
You are VERY lucky. 2 weeks ago i bought what I thought was a base model air of craigslist and turned out it had applecare so I took it to local police just to make sure it was legit and it was stolen. Lost 750$ on that deal. i let my guard down unfortunately.
 
I hate to one up this story but I got a very similar deal off Craigslist. The config was 11" i5 1.6ghz/2gb/128gb ssd which retails at $1099 with the SSD upgrade. Someone was selling for $900 on CL and the post was up for about a week.

I told the guy I didn't think he was going to get that much for it. He said he'd take anything because his exgf got it for him for Xmas and he doesn't know anything about macs and would rather put the money towards a PC. I offered $600, he took it immediately but banks were closed so I could only take out $500 from the ATM. Had another $60 in my pocket so he as even cool with that. Brought it home, checked the serial, sure enough it was bought a week before Xmas and was still tied to his name so everything checked out.

Computer was in prisine mint condition. Sold my old C2D 11" air for $750 next day so I netted $190 in my pocket and was able to upgrade my config!

To top it all off, it came with both a Samsung LCD panel and SSD HD.
 
swiftbmx said:
I hate to one up this story but I got a very similar deal off Craigslist. The config was 11" i5 1.6ghz/2gb/128gb ssd which retails at $1099 with the SSD upgrade. Someone was selling for $900 on CL and the post was up for about a week.

I told the guy I didn't think he was going to get that much for it. He said he'd take anything because his exgf got it for him for Xmas and he doesn't know anything about macs and would rather put the money towards a PC. I offered $600, he took it immediately but banks were closed so I could only take out $500 from the ATM. Had another $60 in my pocket so he as even cool with that. Brought it home, checked the serial, sure enough it was bought a week before Xmas and was still tied to his name so everything checked out.

Computer was in prisine mint condition. Sold my old C2D 11" air for $750 next day so I netted $190 in my pocket and was able to upgrade my config!

To top it all off, it came with both a Samsung LCD panel and SSD HD.
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Awesome! Congrats, that is a great deal! I did something similar with my iPhone back in October. Sold my 16gb iPhone 4 for $350 on Craigslist and then bought a 4s 32gb for $300 (with my upgrade of course). So I came out with a newer phone and $50 in my pocket.
 
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I found an ad on CL for this:

1.6 HZ Intel Core 2 Duo processor,
2 GB DDR3 SDRAM,
120 GB Hard Drive HDD
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M grafic processor w/ 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM
2008-2009ish model, he is not positive...

Thoughts?

He said bottom dollar is $650
 
I was trying to sell my two months old 15" MBP back in August and the guy stole it from me in front of everybody. I didn't want to approach him because who knows what he might carry. Ripped off his license plate and turned out it was fake. Police didn't come until an hour or so later. This was happened in Dallas, TX.

Edit: FYI, you can't flag a stolen laptop and apple wont do it either. There's no way you can find out of the laptop is legit or not unless the seller has receipt to prove it otherwise. I'm almost guarantee you that most of the laptops that claimed to received as gifts on this forum and craigslist without receipt are stolen.
 
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gjb11 said:
I found an ad on CL for this:

1.6 HZ Intel Core 2 Duo processor,
2 GB DDR3 SDRAM,
120 GB Hard Drive HDD
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M grafic processor w/ 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM
2008-2009ish model, he is not positive...

Thoughts?

He said bottom dollar is $650
Click to expand...

IMHO, if it is the pre-2010 model MBA, that's too much. Refurb 2010 models direct from Apple start at $700.
 
gjb11 said:
I know this isn't an air but saw this ad on craigslist:

http://tippecanoe.craigslist.org/sys/2843967776.html

2.4Ghz core 2 duo. Thoughts/help/questions I should ask?
Click to expand...

Not worth $725. Check out cowboom.com for some i5 MBP and Airs.

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tonie said:
Edit: FYI, you can't flag a stolen laptop and apple wont do it either. There's no way you can find out of the laptop is legit or not unless the seller has receipt to prove it otherwise. I'm almost guarantee you that most of the laptops that claimed to received as gifts on this forum and craigslist without receipt are stolen.
Click to expand...

Sorry your laptop got stolen and you did nothing to stop it but mine was purchased from someone legitimately. I'm basing that on the type of person I interacted with and where I met him(his residence in a pretty upscale neighborhood). I've done over 100 transactions off CL between both buying and selling and all have been smooth and easy. You need to have a certain radar to weed out the idiots.
 
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