Up to you

by Jimmy Greystone - 3/6/12 8:03 PM

In Reply to: re:Refurbished by pinkzroxor

Up to you, but it'd be a good way to save $100 or so, and you do get the same 1 year warranty with Apple refurbs as you do new units, and they are even eligible for AppleCare. Refrubs tend to get a bad rap, and somewhat deserved from companies that will do a half-arsed job fixing things, shove it out the door at firesale prices and virtually no warranty beyond DOA... They break rather quickly, and people are left with an understandable bad taste in their mouths over the whole experience.

This is definitely one area where Apple goes above and beyond. On the consumer side of things, Apple is an absolute delight to deal with, and this is just one of many examples. Just pray you never have to deal with them from the business end of things, because they are as big a nightmare on that end as they are a delight on the consumer end. Their response to pretty much any disagreement, no matter how slight, is "Our way or the highway." I won't even get started on some of the dealings I've had with various regional managers in their Field Support division, because I'm getting too far astray from the topic as it is. Point is, if I take off my ACMT hat and put on my consumer hat, Apple is a company I would have no qualms about buying a refurb unit from. Not sure I could say the same about other companies, but knowing what I do about the Apple repair process, plus the fact that they're willing to back it up with the same limited warranty, and making them eligible for AppleCare... If they're bluffing, then they're some people I would never want to play poker with.

However, the choice is yours. Refurbs can be a good way to save a little extra money, but you do need to be careful about the specs. Apple won't label models based on year or anything like that, so if you go the refurb route you want to make sure the specs you see line up pretty much exactly with the new offerings. Otherwise you might wind up with an 09 or 2010 model that was a display model in a store or something before some customer or clumsy employee broke it.