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Macbook Pro 17 Unibody on Craigslist for $1300

S

SidBala

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 27, 2010
533
0
Hi Guys,

I am gonna check out a craiglist macbook today. The seller seems legit(I spoke to him on the phone).

Ad:

for sale locally

no shipping

excellent condition

Apple UNIBODY Macbook pro 17inch
GLOSSY screen 1920x1200

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz / 4gb RAM / 320gb HD / Nvidia 9400 256mb VRAM / DVDRW / 802.11n / isight, webcam
NO WARRANTY / NO APPLECARE
macbook pro + charger only - nothing else included

excellent condition
$1300 cash

will not ship
Click to expand...


I am planning to use it for university for the next two years and do some light gaming. I will be loading windows on it.

Is it a good deal guys? The seller says it is 13 months old. He has no box, no receipts and no disks. He has only the charger and the notebook itself.

I have never bought a used laptop before. What should I be looking out for?
 
Its probobally stolen. Great Deal Buy it!! JKJK

If it is stolen and you can prove it then don't buy it and report him to the police or just forget about it but i would not buy something stolen

Edit: What you should look for is dents on the body that signify it being dropped. Smell the keyboard and look for spots of residue to see if anything has been spilled on it. Open up photobooth to test the isight. Test the keyboard backlight and test the speakers.

Also, go into about this mac and make sure the specs match up.
 
So I checked it out. The seller was a very nice man. It seems that his brother-in-law is the real owner. But he had lost his job and moved out of town to look for jobs. Now this guy is selling his brother's stuff for him on CL for cash.

I checked out the serial with the website posted above. It is not reported stolen.

Besides, I went to the guy's workplace to get it. And I even have his business card, so in case if it does turn out that it was stolen, I would know where to point the finger.

Anyway, so I bought it. I bargained a bit and got the price down to $1200. The laptop looks pristine, showing no signs of rough usage. The battery has 81 cycles on it.

Seems like a good deal. Let's see how it goes. Thanks for the advice.
 
LOL, it almost sounds like you WANT it to have been stolen.

Well, I'll let you guys know if it really does turn out to be stolen.
 
Almost sounds like you wanted people to tell you to go for it.

To me it seems they're just giving their opinion. If you owned a mac book would you throw out the disks, manuals etc?
 
Collected said:
Almost sounds like you wanted people to tell you to go for it.

To me it seems they're just giving their opinion. If you owned a mac book would you throw out the disks, manuals etc?
Click to expand...

Yup. People love to throw away receipt and accessories to a $2000+ item. :rolleyes:
 
thegoldenmackid said:
stolen.
Click to expand...

I bought one last year that in retrospect could be stolen too. It was some young kid telling some story about going off to college. I didn't get an original receipt either. ;)

But, seriously, not everyone babies their electronics and keeps everything like most of the tech people on a forum like this do. To some a computer is just like their toaster, television, or DVD player. Manuals, boxes, discs, etc. get thown out or stored away and then lost. It does happen. OP it could be stolen, as all the skeptics are saying, or it could be genuine. Like you say, I doubt someone would meet you at their place of work and give you a card if they weren't legit.

Best of luck.
 
mscriv said:
I bought one last year that in retrospect could be stolen too. It was some young kid telling some story about going off to college. I didn't get an original receipt either. ;)

But, seriously, not everyone babies their electronics and keeps everything like most of the tech people on a forum like this do. To some a computer is just like their toaster, television, or DVD player. Manuals, boxes, discs, etc. get thown out or stored away and then lost. It does happen. OP it could be stolen, as all the skeptics are saying, or it could be be genuine. Like you say, I doubt someone would meet you at their place of work and give you a card if they weren't legit.

Best of luck.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff
 
Believe it or not, some people do not feel a compulsive urge to keep the box in a vault.

The receipt can be easily thrown away as AppleCare follows the serial #, and with a lost/discarded box also comes lost/discarded OS X DVDs. He has the charger, which is all that matters. If it were a Windows laptop, most people wouldn't second guess it. Selling something without original accessories does not make you a thief.
 
like someone already said, not everyone keeps the box and everything. and also, not everyone knows how much to sell their things for. so it could be legit.

even if it is stolen, Apple won't do anything (unless it was somehow stolen from one of their stores)

if Apple could do something, i could've sold my MacBook and then claimed the buyer stole it. got my MacBook back + kept the money.
 
like someone already said, not everyone keeps the box and everything. and also, not everyone knows how much to sell their things for. so it could be legit.
Click to expand...

You have an excellent point. There has been a CL scammer around my area putting up ads for the macbook 17 inch priced at $1300. This guy posts ads pretty much every week and has been doing so for the past 2 - 3 months.

When you contact this scammer, the guy will say some BS about him being in Iraq and how can ship the macbook to you if you use an escrow service.

My theory is that someone wanting to sell their macbook would look at CL to figure out what a good selling price is. They look at this guy's very many ads and assume that $1300 is the going price for their macbook.

I believe is what has happened. Besides on the apple serial number website, there was a big number saying "Buyback price". And when I put this guy's serial into it, it gave me a buyback price of $1200. This is the price that the website is willing to pay for that mac. So the seller agreed to this price.

It is quite interesting how CL is vulnerable to price fixing like this.
 
Nope. Typically this is what happens.

When it's not stolen:
they post something at low price
lots of people respond
they raise the price


When it's stolen:
they post something at low price
lots of people respond, realize it's stolen and don't buy
theif sells it to those who tries to rationalize buying stolen goods
 
Well yes I'm really not that meticulous regarding keeping receipts and what not.


mscriv said:
I bought one last year that in retrospect could be stolen too. It was some young kid telling some story about going off to college. I didn't get an original receipt either. ;)

But, seriously, not everyone babies their electronics and keeps everything like most of the tech people on a forum like this do. To some a computer is just like their toaster, television, or DVD player. Manuals, boxes, discs, etc. get thown out or stored away and then lost. It does happen. OP it could be stolen, as all the skeptics are saying, or it could be genuine. Like you say, I doubt someone would meet you at their place of work and give you a card if they weren't legit.

Best of luck.
Click to expand...
 
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