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

[Leam Hall]

Three days after my one and only e-bay purchase, using a brand new PayPal
card that had only gotten used for Amazon, someone orders network gear with
my card info. I would strongly recommend not doing anything with e-bay.


On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 10:40 AM DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> I've had good luck with eBay purchases of off-lease laptops. The last
> one came with a 90 day warranty and was about 50% off the price of a new
> system.  The seller had tens of thousands of excellent reviews.  The
> purchase was exactly as expected.  8th generation Core i5 for $305,
> including factory ready Win10 install.
>
> I never saw the Win10 - pulled the HDD and put in an SSD, then last
> month repurposed that HDD for an emergency need before another HDD
> failed.  I think the Win10 license is stored in the BIOS somewhere, but
> I don't know anything about Win10 today.
>
> I might be having the same Intuit problem as you, but not with TurboTax.
> We dumped them decades ago over DRM and have been happily using a
> different tool.
>
> On 10/24/19 12:30 PM, Neal Rhodes via Ale wrote:
> > 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,
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