Good Computer deal at Morgan Computers

HankMcSpank

rdwarr wrote:

....and 99% of it appears to belong to you

It does not mean that the machine has been sitting broken in a corner for months - it should have been professionally rebuilt to "as new" quality. If it's not worth rebuilding a £300 PC then they wouldn't make them in the first place.

"Should have"...exactly!

Also if you're buying it from Morgan for £211, then to make a profit they'll be buying for somewhat less from the manafacturer. Therefore to the manafacturer it's worth almost diddly squat...certainly not enough to warrant having someone troubleshoot returned goods.

Best you can hope for is a wiped disk, operating system reload...but if it was returned because of a h/w problem, then it'll likely still have it.

hokers

HankMcSpank wrote:

"Should have"...exactly!

Also if you're buying it from Morgan for £211, then to make a profit they'll be buying for somewhat less from the manafacturer. Therefore to the manafacturer it's worth almost diddly squat...certainly not enough to warrant having someone troubleshoot returned goods.

Best you can hope for is a wiped disk, operating system reload...but if it was returned because of a h/w problem, then it'll likely still have it.

Is this based only on your own scepticism about refurbs or do you have any actual evidence of this?I've bought dozens of refurb PCs, sold under warranty and had no problems at all.

HankMcSpank

hokers wrote:

Is this based only on your own scepticism about refurbs

It's based on what I see with my own eyes!

Listen, I'm not saying that you'll all have problems or that this isn't a good buy, I just think buyers ought to really understand what's gone on here.

Person buys PC.
Said person had a problem.
He returns PC to retailer.
Retailer returns PC to manafacturer.
If a high cost item, manafacturer then investigates/resolves.
If the item is low cost, manafacturer doesn't investigate, but for example merely reinstalls operating system & offload items via a "pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap" outlet.

Sure it's a good price, sure Morgan are fine, sure most will work ok....but lets not pretend that "factory reworked" of "refurbished" means the manafacturer has been sweating over a workbench trying to get to the bottom of a problematic 'return' before selling it on.

CAT-THE-FIFTH

Actually they most likely replace the faulty item and sell the computer at a low price to claw back some of the cost.

I don't think they can technically sell a faulty computer without them telling the buyer!

That would be misadvertising an item as "working"!

This is what Morgan Computers say about the computer in question -

"EMachine Stock Status, 20 September 2006

To clarify, these units are "high street" returns (typically in as new condition) which have been reworked by the manufacturer. They are pretty much indistinguishable from new save that they are in plain brown boxes, they are supplied with brand new keyboard, mouse, speakers, Windows licence, recovery CD, all necessary cables etc and are covered by a one year warranty and telephone support (and its not a stitch up rate number, standard 020 ... number)
Tom Willett | Morgan Computers "

hokers

HankMcSpank wrote:

It's based on what I see with my own eyes!

Listen, I'm not saying that you'll all have problems or that this isn't a good buy, I just think buyers ought to really understand what's gone on here.

Person buys PC.
Said person had a problem.
He returns PC to retailer.
Retailer returns PC to manafacturer.
If a high cost item, manafacturer then investigates/resolves.
If the item is low cost, manafacturer doesn't investigate, but for example merely reinstalls operating system & offload items via a "pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap" outlet.

Sure it's a good price, sure Morgan are fine, sure most will work ok....but lets not pretend that "factory reworked" of "refurbished" means the manafacturer has been sweating over a workbench trying to get to the bottom of a problematic 'return' before selling it on.

I'm not convinced. If you sell it under warranty, it's worth making sure it works first time rather than having to take it back a month later, fix it and ship it again.

Do you work/have worked for a PC retailer with some insider knowledge here?

Nilrem

I would assume that most such systems have probably been tested fairly well, and any that failed would be scrapped/broken down and sold for scrap.

It only takes a few minutes to find many common problems with factory built new systems as the parts are known to work together, so none of that time consuming trying to work out which exact system setting you need to change to solve a problem that is common with homebuilt systems;)
Add to that the way most production lines that build these systems will have diagnostics setup to test the systems prior to dispatch and the chances are most "returns" won't take more than a few minutes of a techs time to sort many problems (and can be left running tests on a bench unattended if needed).

I beleive under the current (new) waste laws it costs the companies to scrap things like PC's, so even if they just break even on the cost of sorting a problem it's probably worth their while to sell it on (compared to taking a loss on the hardware and then on the disposal of it).

Also as already mentioned in this thread, a lot of "returns" for things like computers are due to very simple problems, DOA componants (hard drive etc), something coming loose during transit (cables/heatsinks) or user error.