It comes with the same warranty as a new one, and you can buy the same extended warranty that you can on a new one. In other words, it's backed just as well as a new one.

I've had more trouble with a brand new unit than I have with most refurbs.

IT WAS A JOKE. @:-)

Oh god I cannot get Carlin out of my head today!

"See how often the simple solution will elude us"

Yes. All "certified" preowned automobiles come with a better warranty than you would get if you bought an ordinary used car. As they should.

Essentially you are buying a used ipod of unknown quality and prior use. Hey, it's your money, if it's worth it to roll the dice for $100 go right ahead. As for me, I'd rather bet on red than buy a re-furb anything with a crappo warranty.

But not better than a NEW car. :confused:

I understand where you're coming from, but the comparing a PDA/cell-phone to a car isn't exactly an "apples to apples" comparison. I also realize that some manufacturers provide extended warranties with their refurbished products, however many (including Apple) do not.

FWIW, I (along with my family) have purchased several Apple "refurbs" over the years...a couple of iPods, a laptop, etc.). We have never received anything out of the box that didn't look or perform as if it was "brand new". In addition, you are also still able to purchase the Applecare warranty if you really want the added protection.

I am sure that Apple has sold a lemon or two over the years, but IME I have never had a problem and wouldn't hesitate to purchase a refurbished iPhone (and take the extra $100 and go out to dinner).

Craig

First you compare to a certified preowned car, but then you say "used ipod of unknown quality and prior use", which is akin to a non-certified car. Can't be both ways.

And indeed it isn't. It's much more akin to the certified car. This stuff isn't just reboxed and resold. It's all checked and tested, indeed, could be argued that they're tested more than new units. And, in fact, they do come with a better warranty than an ordinary used unit. An ordinary used unit would only have the balance of factory warranty or, if that's over, zero. These have a warranty just like brand new.

Not that there's anything wrong with avoiding refurbs. That's a choice many people make. And many people make that choice based on the same falsehoods, or, when talking specifically of Apple stuff, based on some other manufacturer's crappy refurb process. I have extensive experience with Apple refurbished and new products, and I have found no significant difference in the failure rates. It can be a way to save money simply because an equally tested product can't sold as new.

A better way to choose whether or not to buy refurb is based on the discount, I find. With the iPhone, there's no other discount place to buy one, so $100 off is $100 off, or 20% of the price of the 4GB, a good discount. With Macs, there are authorized dealers who sell at a discount, so I end up with new ones a lot because comparing that with the price of a refurb at Apple doesn't result in a large enough discount to make sense to me.

For some folks, there isn't a discount amount that would make sense to them. They'd rather have it now and new. Which is fine. Just don't pretend what they're selling is a reboxed untested used product, because it isn't.

Actually from a tech standpoint, a refurbished item is in many ways superior to any given new item. The bugs have been ironed out.

If they were better, the product would be cheaper - at least that's the way an efficient market works.

Are the failure rates the same? If so, that would be a powerful advertising tool - strangely missing.

The more logicalexplanation is that consumers intuitively know that re-furbs are inferior because they are not new and therefore have an increased risk of failure. And that some manufacturing days are better than others, due to variables in components and labor.

My anecdotal experience (and I'll expect many others) is more typical than what is posted here. I bought a new Pioneer stereo, after 18 mo it required repair - Pioneer agreed to cover the parts but not labor. After 3 years it failed again. I then dumped Pioneer and bought a Sony receiver, which has never required
repair.

My point is that most people (and probably even kids, as computers proliferate) have some experience with lemons. And a refurb is an unknown - could be a lemon, could be a return, or maybe just a faulty component that was fixed. That is why it is discounted - because of the risk.

Yes, there is a similar risk with a new product. But most of us wouldn't buy it in the first place if we thought it was a lemon. And let's face it - most of us place a high value on getting a product brand new out of the box. Is $100 the proper over/under? Obviously, reasonable minds can differ. :D

apple DOES get a lot of returns, they have the 14 day period for NQA returns. As for the iphone, I think a LOT of people bought 2, thinking they would sell and profit from the second phone. When that was not possible, they returned the second. Now, UNOPENED is not a return that goes to refurb stock, but an opened item is. So, I think the quality of these refurbs is probably higher than most regardless. Were I in the market for Gen 1.0 iphone, I wouldn't hesitate to go this route for an 8GB phone.

I dunno. I don't think you heavily market the refurbs with stuff like claiming the failure rate is the same. You offer them because there's money to be made when done right. But you don't want to go drawing too much attention to it, since you get people thinking like this. :D

I believe we inherently jump to the conclusion that the refurb is inferior because it can't be sold as new. It's a perception that can only be overcome in the market by offering a lower price as an incentive, even if the failure rates may be similar. Heck, the biggest Apple lemon I've ever had is this MacBook Pro I'm using, bought brand new about 10 months ago, repaired 3 times so far, and I think it still has an unrelated other problem I haven't taken it in for. And we have a fleet of iMac G5s which have several failures repaired under an "extended repair program" (basically not quite a recall), and those were all bought new. You take a chance on a lemon either way.

Possibly, there is more lemon recourse if the product is new vs refurbished, but in the case of dealing with Apple warranty coverage they are not differentiated. Many other refurbished electronics programs don't measure up, so while a lot of people groan at making Apple a special case, it may well be fairly true in this arena. But it's hard to measure, mostly anecdotal, and some people's experiences won't match.

Is $100 the over/under? Well, on a $500 original price item, I'd say yeah. Not on a $2000 laptop, probably not even on a $1000 computer. I guess I kinda look for a percentage. In this case 20% looks good, so on a $2000 laptop, $400 discount might look good (and the gap is not usually that wide).

I bought a refurb Magellan GPS a couple years ago from Fry's to try out, and it died in 12 hours. I swapped it for another refurb GPS unit and that replacement died in another 6 hours.

Refurb is highly dependent on the QA department of the service department. IMO I try to avoid refurbs now.

New Jersey Teen says he unlocked the Iphone

Full instructions here

http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/

Thanks, that is great. He's off to college now after doing this. I wonder if he wants to come to grad school ;)

This hack involves soldering and other MacGyvering that most folks aren't gonna wanna mess with. It also disables the visual voicemail feature.

No thanks.

Craig