[ale] Is there anybody we don't hate too much for Refurbs?

[neal at mnopltd.com]

Slightly off-topic, but not too much.

My wife and partner informs me that TurboTax will no longer run on her 
Win7 desktop.   Without TurboTax, life ends as we know it.

We have used off-lease refurbs for most of our company's life.  If it's 
a server, I get a refurb and replace the disk with a new mirrored pair. 
(and load linux)   If it's a desktop, I feel lucky.

Thus far we've been fortunate at getting them from Tiger Direct.  Alas, 
no longer.   Got one on Amazon a few years back and that has been fine 
for Android development.

So, I trying to find average form factor 8GB, 1TB disk, Win 10 Pro, VGA 
& HDMI.    When I look at Amazon, there are plenty of choices.  Many of 
which have 15-25% one-star ratings. And you read them, it's a horror 
show - "arrived with broken power supply",  "NIC intermittent",  "Vendor 
non-communicative".

Yes, Amazon is horrible at policing their suppliers.    I'm 
wondering.... are companies being more selective at only letting go of 
their desktops when they know they are going south?   Are refurb vendors 
getting worse?

Is there anybody we like for refurbs these days?

I see the last one I bought was from Amazon Renewed, which says it has a 
90 day Amazon guarantee.  I just checked at it has a 19% one star 
review.   I guess I was just lucky.

Regards,


Neal