Buying a laptop from ebay

busiscoming2

Would you buy a secondhand laptop from ebay?

I am looking to get one for my son but cant really afford to buy a brand new one. What should I be looking out for and would I just be wasting my time? Any secondhand models I should steer well clear of and any that are better than the others?

Are refurbished ones ok to buy?

Sorry for all the questions but I am very wary!!!!

JasX

generally no I wouldn't, if it has any faults at all its likely to be unrepairable and you'll have a nice new doorstop, even if it is all working the battery will likely be well worn down and aged components will likely quickly lead to the above doorstop situation.

whats your budget? what would it be used for? could he make do with a desktop instead? if he must have a laptop have you tried dell outlet?

da1seggy

I've bought two previously, one new, one 2nd hand.

As with buying anything on eBay, do your research. Check seller rating, look at the sellers history (i.e,, have they previously sold laptops or similar electronics). If they've only just joined eBay, or they previously sold cheaper goods, then all of a sudden they have 20 Dell laptops, I'm wary. They may well be totally legit, but I'm not taking the chance.

The more information they put in their description, the better. Attention to detail is everything. Actual pictures of the product rather than stock pictures taken from the manufacturers website are advantageous.

The simple rule I go by, if it looks too good to be true, walk away. You can get a good spec new laptop for around £300 & a refurb for under £200

Hammyman

busiscoming2 wrote: »

Would you buy a secondhand laptop from ebay?

I am looking to get one for my son but cant really afford to buy a brand new one. What should I be looking out for and would I just be wasting my time? Any secondhand models I should steer well clear of and any that are better than the others?

Are refurbished ones ok to buy?

Sorry for all the questions but I am very wary!!!!

I sell laptops on Ebay as part of my business. I sell ex-display stock and used stock. The used stock is ex-corporate, in full working order and gets a thorough go over. Anything remotely flakey gets broken for spares. As I am a registered business on Ebay, you are covered by the Distance Selling Regulations which basically means you've 7 days to decide if you like it or not and return for a full refund without any reason whatsoever.

Some, like me, allow you to collect and if they're a business there is no need not to. I think I'd tend to prefer those as a buyer.

Many of the business sellers offer a 3-6 month warranty however virtually nobody warranties batteries other than for dead on arrival. Remember that refurbished should mean exactly that. The plastics should be in good condition with no more than minor marking and the fan should be clean. The whole laptop should be in good clean condition. Too many sellers think wiping the hard drive and sticking Windows on is refurbished. It isn't.

Check feedback. You'll get an idea from that how accurate the listing is and how good the seller is. As da1segtgy said, be wary of those who sell a load of old items and then have a glut of laptops. Mine, as a seller, has a constant stream of IT gear since 2007 (account opened in 2000) which built up and over the last 12 months has basically nothing but laptops and parts in it now - that's the kind of thing you need to be looking at.

PAY VIA PAYPAL. If it turns up and ends up as a duff, you can send it back as "not as described" and get a refund via Paypal - Sellers, me included, feel that Paypal is very biased towards the buyer with this so basically you've got more protection than I have as a seller. ONLY BUY FROM A SELLER WHERE YOU CAN GET PAYPAL PROTECTION AS A BUYER THAT COVERS THE VALUE OF THE LAPTOP.

As to what to avoid:

Compaq F-Series, Hp DV or G series as they have wifi issues. Avoid anything with nVidia 8000 series graphics. Acer budget range, especially Aspires.

What to buy?
If you want strong as a rock then Dell Latitude D6 series or D8 series, HP NC series and any IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T or X series. All of these are good corporate stalwarts. I sell a lot of Dell Latitude D610s, usually in mint condition. They're well up to most normal household use and there's plenty of them around in good condition around £130-£180 price so no need to end up with a dog.

nomoneytoday

Have you looked at the Dell outlet store?

With any ebay sellers, look at their history and feedback.. Many are legit businesses selling old end of line and ex-corporate stock, others aren't so ideal..

busiscoming2

Hammyman wrote: »

Compaq F-Series, Hp DV or G series as they have wifi issues. Avoid anything with nVidia 8000 series graphics. Acer budget range, especially Aspires.

Thanks for your helpful post, but would like to know what is wrong with the Acer Aspires as that is what I use .

busiscoming2

JasX wrote: »

generally no I wouldn't, if it has any faults at all its likely to be unrepairable and you'll have a nice new doorstop, even if it is all working the battery will likely be well worn down and aged components will likely quickly lead to the above doorstop situation.

whats your budget? what would it be used for? could he make do with a desktop instead? if he must have a laptop have you tried dell outlet?

nomoneytoday wrote: »

Have you looked at the Dell outlet store?

With any ebay sellers, look at their history and feedback.. Many are legit businesses selling old end of line and ex-corporate stock, others aren't so ideal..

I shall have a look at the Dell outlet - thank you.

Snooze

I agree with all da1seggy and Hammerman say. You can still get some absolute bargains though if you keep your eyes peeled. For example, a couple of months back I was the winning bidder on a brand new and boxed ThinkPad T500 for £550. Even a basic spec one would have been a steal at that price in comparison to what they go for through official channels, but this one has the 2.53 Ghz processor, 4 GB DDR3, 6 MB L2 cache, 320GB HD, WSXGA+ screen, 512 MB graphics, etc which is over a grandsworth of machine. :beer:

On the other side of the coin you can also be caught out even if you know what you're looking for. A few months back there was a guy just up the road from me selling a secondhand Compaq 6720s for £120 on a buy-it-now because he couldn't get Vista to install on it with a genuine serial and when trying to install XP it said it couldn't find the HDD. Having one of the same machine already I knew exactly how to fix the XP problem so talked him down to £90 and bought it (the listing said everything else was fine and working, and his feedback was good). I checked it out when I went to collect it and it was working fine as far as the Vista serial screen but when I got it home and fired it up, the picture was only filling 75% of the screen and I had 3" of black border down the right hand side. As it was doing the same thing in the bios as well then I knew it wasn't a graphics driver issue. I belled the guy up and got into a huge argument with him over it because he said I saw it working fine when I collected it so as far as he was concerned that was the end of it. I was ready to go up there and start altering his face to persuade him to give me my money back but then after rebooting following some updates the screen was now working fine :cool:. The updates were not related and it was purely coincidental because a few days later the screen went pants again. As it turned out, it was the screen inverter that was on its way out and a secondhand one from ebay for a tenner fixed the problem, but it's stuff like this that is what you are risking when buying secondhand laptops and PCs. For £100 all in, the Compaq was still a bargain as these go for £170-200 is secondhand good working order, but it was not without its hassles. :cool:

Snooze

busiscoming2 wrote: »

Thanks for your helpful post, but would like to know what is wrong with the Acer Aspires as that is what I use .

They're a lot better these days than they used to be, but build quality is still cheap parts and they are renowned for the power adapter pin snapping off.