To Refurb or Not To Refurb

[gnasher729]

Just got an iMac and it was dead on arrival. Spent 2 hours on phone with tech support to no avail. Then another few hours negotiating a deal on a new one. Saleman told me that I had to expect something like what happened since it was refurbished and not new.

What a royal waste of time...

The exact same thing can happen with a brand new iMac, or with any other brand new computer. Some percentage of computers sold will arrive dead; that's just a fact. Any statistic that I ever read indicated that Macs were better than your average PC, but with 4 million sold each quarter, the number of dead computers is still a six digit number.

The sales person is talking out of his or her arse. And if he or she was an Apple employee then you should have asked to talk to their manager.

 

[c1phr]

The sales person is talking out of his or her arse. And if he or she was an Apple employee then you should have asked to talk to their manager.

This especially. Any Apply employee should know that Apple Refurbished machines get tested extensively, and the fact that it's a refurb unit has nothing to do with the fact that it's under a lower quality control standard. For all anyone knows, FedEx dropped it and caused some odd internal damage (unlikely, but possible), and refurb or new, FedEx handles it all the same.

 

[CWallace]

My 2011 i7 iMac is a refurb and it came with double the RAM and VRAM expected so I saved $600 over new.

I'll probably buy new for my next iMac when they update, but I am tempted to wait a few more months to see if I can snag a refurb.

 

[VideoBeagle]

Do you need to sign for the delivery of an iMac? I want to order a refurb but its virtually impossible for me to be here to sign for it. My neighbors will bring it in for me (I live in a condo where the main door is locked) so I'm not concerned with it being stolen.

For mine, I'm just having it shipped to the local apple store (which may not be convienent for lots..for me, I have one about 5 - 10 minutes from my apartment so it's almost as easy as having it go there, without concerns of it being left on the porch and rain or theft or something).

now, if they'd just let me know it was ready for pick up!! (It's due today).