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

[neal at mnopltd.com]

Two days after ordering Italian Train Tickets, on TrenItalia, on an 
Amazon credit card, which was only previously used on Amazon's website, 
my credit card was used elsewhere.   Suggests one should never do 
business on/with anyone/anything in Italy.

Or, never use a debit card.   The credit card company ate my problem.   
Had it been a debit card it would have been my problem.    I do any 
commerce with Chinese companies via a paypal account that rarely has 
more than dinner and a movie in it.

regards,
Neal

On 2019-10-25 10:25, Leam Hall via Ale wrote:
> 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,
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo