When will the new MacBook Pro be refurbished?
refurb.me
refurb.me
Most of my electronics were bought as refurbished, and I've never regretted it. It's surprising just how "new' a refurbished item can be at a substantial discount. And not once have I had a issues with refurbished items. (the keyboard issue for my last laptop didn't manifest until after ~6 years of use).
Raw parts in, good parts out is easier and safer than usually putting in raw parts, but sometimes putting in refurbished parts. Imagine you need something as insignificant as a replacement SIM tray, a replacement for the bent SIM tray ejector pin, and the scratch protectors, stickers, and box labels that need replacement to get that in and out. The scratch protector plastic film might be automatically applied from a massive roll as the case is conveyed out of the coating machine; it's not made to be hand applied. How would a technician guarantee that it's just the SIM tray that broke due to contamination in the injection molding machine and not a problem with the spring contacts inside the phone? The SIM ejector pin probably costs less than a penny and is automatically inserted in every hardware pack that are stuffed and weighed automatically to a fraction of a gram; do you have a technician inspect each one or just throw the old parts away and replace the whole bag?
As a controls engineer, I work hard to make sure that a knowledgeable operator can run my robotic manufacturing cells with minimal waste. The first 80% of a cell, the no-faults "happy path" takes not too much time, but I have spent hundreds - probably thousands - of hours of my life ensuring that my cells are as flexible and fault tolerant as practical. But it's really hard. Customers are always on-board when it makes financial sense, and often when it makes environmental or ethical sense, but sometimes the laws of physics and the Pandora's box of automation just require some waste and leave a particular process untenable.
> Used products generally do not come with a manufacturer's warranty but all of our items are backed by Amazon’s return policy. If you would like additional protection, you can purchase a warranty from Square Trade to cover certain items.
Maybe there are better consumer protections in the UK?
"All Amazon Warehouse items are covered under legal warranty for 1 year. If your item becomes defective after the Amazon return period, Amazon will repair any defective item, and if a repair is not possible, we will refund the purchase price in accordance with Amazon's Returns Policy."
It's pretty bare bones, but the problem I was trying to fix was that it took me a long time to browse the Amazon Warehouse offers trying to find the best deals. Amazon doesn't make it easy since they don't show the new and used prices side by side if you search directly under the Amazon Warehouse category. There is also no way to sort by discount. I wasted many hours until one day I decided it was faster to spend a few weeks automating this process.
Edit: saw replies, I'll just say it's Monday morning and leave it at that.
I think you have some data problems.
Legally Amazon had a contract to deliver you an item. They failed to do that, so you should have reported it as undelivered. When this has happens to me Amazon usually spend a few days “investigating” if the courier misplaced the item, then they admit it wasn’t delivered and send a replacement.
If you report it as “delivered but there’s something wrong with it” then that’s going to trigger them to request you return it, and if you return an empty box that’s going to lead to the “customer failed to return item” pathway.
I've worked in quite a few eCommerce companies on the fulfilment side (although not Amazon, but including Amazon sellers) and this is pretty common - the overwhelming cause is that a scammer buys a product from an online store, takes it out of the box, replaces it with rocks or something of a similar size/shape to make it weigh the right amount, then shrink wraps it to make it look like it hasn't been sold and then returns it for the full value.
However sometimes customers also lie and say that they received an empty box, when they actually had the item inside.
It is very rare that the manufacturer will ship an empty box (however it does sometimes happen).
Because of this, most eCommerce companies adopt a policy of "If the 'new' item was previously an unopened return, allow the refund, however if not, do not allow a refund". eCommerce companies track this by using different bins for returned products (or at least by not returning that product to a bin with the same SKU that is non-returned). This sucks for the customer if you are one of the unlucky people that gets a box sent empty by the manufacturer, but fortunately that's very rare (it's a tough one to resolve without lots of theft, as it's very easy for people to say that the box was empty and very hard to prove otherwise).
This is even more difficult with third party sellers, as Amazon may not have full visibility with how they are tracking returns, and those third party sellers may have different policies around 'received empty' returns (I've not seen the above in any official policy, but can confirm it is common practice - again not with Amazon but I've worked with a number of eCommerce companies with similar issues and policies).
An exception to this is if it’s shipped by Amazon, as I believe they have in-line weigh scales.
Amazon as a company though is almost impossible to deal with if you need to do something outside their regular processes or procedures, and they are heavily bureaucratic from an external perspective (including to their ‘partners’). I suspect you have unfortunately reached a block on their internal flow chart that says “no refund” and the customer services operative has very little discretion to do something different.
I have starting curtailing purchases from Amazon, and ordering from any alternatives whenever possible.
My only experience with Amazon support was a failure to deliver a $600 item, Amazon not only refunded the price right away after we figured out what was going on, but also credited me $100 for my trouble.
Comcast? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.
There are things I will NOT buy used/refurbished, such as hard drives (I always replace the drive in refurbished laptops and put the refurbished drive into secondary capacity).
The experience is even better now than It used to be. I remember buying an iMac a long time ago and it came in an ugly brown box that screamed "you bought this at a discount". My recent Macbook Air just has a tiny "refurbished by Apple" note on what is otherwise normal retail packaging.
For smaller devices I'll even use them as drawer organizers. They're so rugged!
I bought a 13" rMBP in 2016 from the apple refurbished store, no packaging differences from brand new.
A lot of walk-in places only seem to sell 8gb models with salespeople (falsely) claiming that 8gb is as good as 16 or 32gb on an x86 machine.
The first was a an official refurb 2018 MacBook Pro which ended up having a burnt out touchbar and battery issues a year later.
The second was an official Amazon refurb kindle, which never reached even half the battery life of a new model.
This is of course anecdata (these issues could have occurred with brand new items as well), but I would love to see blackblaze style reliability data from companies who buy large numbers of refurb laptops vs new stock.
I’m curious if there’s a correlation.
I'm honestly blown away by the latest version, but what to wait to for the hype to die down and ensure there's no Quality issues with this years model as well. But it appears they may have taken a step back and instead of pushing aesthetics this year, they looked at what its users "want/need".
Why do you consider this to be a bad experience when it was clearly still under warranty and they replaced your topcase for free - brand new touchbar & battery & keyboard?
I imagine the quality varies depending on the third party who does the refurbishing.
The videos contain some colorful language.
Would you mind linking to some of those? He's not my cup of coffee, but I always saw him as a fair guy.
Rossman could get real Apple parts but he doesn't want to because it'd hurt his views.
2. He is using parts made by the same company that made exactly the same chips. Is that Counterfeit?
3. He is using parts he scrapped from other Apple Computer when those parts are not available.
Unless it is outside those three options, I dont see how it is Counterfeit.
And yes, parts with Apple logos stamped on them that are not actual Apple parts are by definition counterfeit.
Apple still does not provide him the parts required to do the board repair that he's known for, even if he did sign up for their authorized repair nonsense.
Rossman’s level of transparency and willingness to address errors is unparalleled.
Using non-original parts in the context of Apple actively making it impossible to obtain such parts - and loudly complaining about it while fighting for right of repair legislation is … not lying, that’s for sure.
Third-party refurbishers would be a different ball game altogether.
Best Buy, et al refurbished units are not quite the same.
Apple runs them through the manufacturing process again -- including testing and repackaging.
Apple have literally the BEST condition you can expect on any refurbished product on the market. But all other refurbishers (Gazelle, Mac of All trades, Amazon Warehouse, Decluttr...) grade them in a scale (A, B, C) based on their cosmetic condition and add a year warranty as well.
You're comparing 'refurbished Apple products' with 'Apple refurbished products'
Two very different things.
But even with a 14 day return policy, Apple cant just turn around and sell this as new. I have seen a few open box items at Best Buy though, usually discounted ~$100 or so.
Also, for anyone considering an MBP, it appears Apple will again offer 6% back on Apple Store purchases over Black Friday/Cyber Monday. They had this deal last year, and it was offered to some folks (seemingly accidentally) last week. It was quickly removed, but they're apparently honoring it for anyone who got in under the wire.
I'm a refurb-first shopper/buyer and something I've noticed about Apple's refurbs is that they often maintain their from-new discount as if products released later (sometimes with lower price tags than the returb) don't exist.
Reviewing the store today, it looks like they are doing a somewhat better job of price models for refurbs but maintain a silly discount for things. Example: refurb XS at $550, "save $340." Claiming $340 is fictitious--a new 11 is $500. Maybe XS to 11 is not an apple-orange comparison but the price competitiveness of a new older model phone speaks to refurbs as not always being bargains.
Refurbished Products <p>Covering answers and tips about refurbished Apple products in general. We break down the answers into sub-categories.</p>
106 days exactly since its first release.
The first batch would be more for people who bought it to review it and return it.
I would've thought the new design would've meant more broken laptops sooner which (I would think) would mean quicker refurbished laptops.
This fucking machine caught FIRE while in my bed as I fell asleep.
Apple had the machine for TWO MONTHS in the flagship San Francisco Store.
After TWO MONTHS they told me that I could not have the machine replaced (it was under RECALL for battery incinerations) -- IT INCINERATED and caught fire. IN MY BED.
After spending TWO MONTHS at the flagship apple store they said they couldnt replace the machine because at "some point" the liquid sensors were set off... and they wouldnt replace it.
So a machine that was under recall for specifically a battery explosion/fire incident, which actually caught fire was denied the recall because a liquid trigger had been set off was denied.
it took Apple, TWO FUCKING MONTHS to come to this conclusion.
Fuck you Tim Apple
> It should be noted that Apple itself is unlikely to sell the new MacBook Pro as refurbished. As soon as it’s released.
This should be one sentence, at least to my ear.