Amazon certifies third-party refurbishers: How good and new is good as new?

Amazon has launched a new service called "Certified Refurbished" to encourage customer confidence when purchasing second-hand consumer electronics. The programme will see certain vendors and third-party refurbishers certified on the Amazon marketplace to sell products which “look and work like new”. Amazon informed us that …

[jason 7]

I have bought several Amazon Refurb items.

I have to say I am very impressed with them all so far.

I bought a Mk2 BT Vision PVR that was to all intents and purposes brand new. Still had the clingy film all over it.

Bought 4 Dell i5 Optiplex desktops that were at least 4 years old but looked brand new. Also had SSDs and 8GB of ram for under £300 each!

Bought a Dell Latitude i5 laptop that was a 2012 model and was perfect but for the two thin rubber feet were missing at the front. Again cheap price.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I have bought several Amazon Refurb items.

Were these simply refurbished ones sold via Amazon? This is is a new service (as far as I'm aware) backed by Amazon themselves, so any issues you send it back to them, not the vendor.

[jason 7]

Re: I have bought several Amazon Refurb items.

Through approved Amazon refurb companies. But if this is a more formal version I'm all for it.

[Gis Bun]

If it wasn't for the year warranty, I wouldn't touch anything refurbished.

[jason 7]

The thing is a lot of the machines sold through this are corporate/enterprise models that just keep on trucking. Plus spare parts are plentiful due to these models being made in their tens if not hundreds of of thousands.

Not like that daft Sony Vaio laptop with all custom firmware for every component.

[Old Englishman]

Anybody who buys electronics from Amazon is nuts. Or batteries. Or inks. Phones turn out to be grey imports, batteries are always second-hand, inks are counterfeit or ripped off. Just don't.

[Anonymous Coward]

agree on the AMZN batteries, I was sent several 'new' Li-ion cellphone batteries that were very used & almost as bad as the ones I was trying to replace. However Amazon being Amazon, once I had brought this to their attention I received a full refund and was told to keep the batteries.

I once bought a used iMac from a non-Apple 'refurbisher' in UK, it was similarly still borked with a temperamental occasional intermittent hardware fault, reseller refused to sort it, being just 'box-shifters'

Many apples bought 'refurb' from Apple direct, that's a much better chance of working out ok. AMZN will need to work hard to provide real quality in 'refurb' like the fruit company.

[chivo243]

Refurbed?

Or just old stock that didn't sell the first time around?

[John Brown (no body)]

a refurbished iPhone 6

"a refurbished iPhone 6 retailing for £379.99, 16 per cent less than a new equivalent"

I'd expect a much bigger discount than 16% on *any* refurbed item. I know some Apple products retain their value better than some other brands, but that strikes me as being a bit expensive for a second hand phone.

In the UK (and across the EU), there's a full two year guarantee. What;s it like on refurbed goods? Does the "limited one year warranty" have any legal backing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: a refurbished iPhone 6

UK sale of goods act can sometimes be much longer than two years (five or six. . .? can't remember)

'merchantable quality' and all that. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: a refurbished iPhone 6

Here's Apple's reference to UK Consumer Law: http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/