The art and science of buying refurbished (Mac)

18 August 2008 - Filed under Life Outside Work

It’s been just over three months since I switched back to the world of Apple Macintosh – for good – starting with this little black MacBook. I bought it second-hand (refurbished, to be exact) from the Apple Web site. In less than 24 hours of placing the order, two (2) muscled-up TNT Express guys turned up with a tiny beige box with an “Apple Certified Reconditioned Product” mark on it. It looked as though my Blackbox – the name I bestowed upon the machine – had been escorted by those guys all the way from Sydney on a chilly 3-hour morning drive.

I don’t know about iPods, but when it comes to Mac portables and desktops, buying refurbished makes a LOT of sense because:

• It’s up to 40% cheaper than brand-new.
• It comes with the same warranty terms as brand-new. It is also possible to purchase an extended warranty on refurbished products, as with brand-new.
• It’s gone through an additional quality assurance inspection and/or repair job after a period of wear-and-tear (ranging from a few days to a few months), which means that the chances of a refurbished product going faulty is less than those of any random brand-new products. Of course, Apple doesn’t say this on their Web site.
• It is not unreasonable to expect some freebies in a refurbished package. I found a cute Apple remote and extra software that I would have otherwise had to purchase separately.
• In extremely lucky cases, your 40%-off refurbished deal may in fact turn out to be brand-spankin-noo. I’ve heard accounts of people ordering a refurbished Mac only to find a brand-new machine delivered. Awww…
• You can save legwork and avoid travelling to that Apple reseller who may or may not have what you are after. It might be a different story, though, and you may actually want to be in the crowd if you had an Apple Store nearby. To date, there are only two Apple Stores in Australia, both in Sydney. I haven’t physically been to any Apple Store in my life. When I do, it will be another blog post.

To make life fairer, buying refurbished does have its downside:

• You don’t get the joy of tearing off the shrink-wrap… so what?
• Apple states that the machine may come with minor scratches on the exterior. Thankfully, mine looked just fine. Usual wear-and-tear is not a biggie anyway. Three months into it, it’s full of scratches now.
• Because the original product had been returned in the past for whatever reason, it may be one generation behind in terms of hardware specs compared to the current brand-new models. I bought one with a 2.2-GHz processor when 2.4-GHz models were out on display and brochures. Big deal… not.
• It comes packaged in a plain cardboard box and not one of those sexy sleek black-and-white designed-by-Apple-in-California boxes. But hey, look on the bright side – you get many more “green” points AND save money at the same time, if you happen to be one of the more environmentally-minded individuals. Count me out.
• Refurbished machines are not built to order. That’s fine, except you would want to add extra memory (RAM) to your refurbished machine. Get your Mac, but don’t get your extra memory chips from Apple because memory is selling cheap everywhere but Apple. Crucial is a good place to enhance your memory. Memory is crucial, as they say. Max it out, while you can.
• Refurbished stocks vary, meaning what you want at the price you want may not always be available. You might need to regularly check back on your local Apple Web site for at least a few days just to see what’s on offer. When you’ve found just what you’ve been waiting for, get your act together and start clicking before it’s long gone.

Sorry, Apple, but you’ve earned so much money lately. Why don’t you let people take advantage of cheaper Macs in this time of global economic downturn. Proceeds still go to your wallet anyway.

2008-08-18  »  JK