Preowned PS3 bought from GAME

Kingsd316

If they do that to every pre-owned console then they need to get new staff and actually train them!
For nostalgic reasons i wanted an original 60gb PS3 after mine was stolen in a burglary, over 3 months I ended up purchasing and returning 6, in fact one of the consoles that was sent to me was the first one I returned because of the YLOD, none of them lasted more than about 2 hours game play. I gave up in the end

McNiven1990

Kingsd316 wrote: »

If they do that to every pre-owned console then they need to get new staff and actually train them!
For nostalgic reasons i wanted an original 60gb PS3 after mine was stolen in a burglary, over 3 months I ended up purchasing and returning 6, in fact one of the consoles that was sent to me was the first one I returned because of the YLOD, none of them lasted more than about 2 hours game play. I gave up in the end

I was really wanting to get an older PS3 for the backwards compatibility but decided against it due to YLOD which happened with my 80gb plus I already have a PS4 and if the rumours are true then it won't be long before I can play PS1+2 games on it. Luckily the 160gb slim that I got seems to be ok so far and I don't think the slims suffer from YLOD, atleast not that I've heard of.

bluenoseam

McNiven1990 wrote: »

But how does running a game go anywhere towards assuring the quality of a product? I know GAME can be a bit of dodgy company but even by their standards that is a rather pathetic way of testing goods. I'm probably wrong but I thought there were laws regarding used electrical goods that had to be tested thoroughly?
At this point I'm not really bothered about the hard drive, if I'm going to change it then I'm not going to let the warranty stop me but I just want to know what the laws are with this sort of thing.

Here's the problem, particularly with PS3 you have to generally INSTALL a game, that takes time - something which in a retail establishment is generally short. When I used to trade in consoles in both Gamestation & HMV it was a case of whack in a game to ensure the laser in the drive is working, unless the customer had games which were pre-installed. With an Xbox it's significantly easier as they'll generally play without installation - atleast the games you'd use to test the machines would.

The problem is from your perspective you want them to test every console for a considerable period of time which simply isn't practical. I don't know what it was like during PS4/XB1 launch, but I'd assume that they were accompanied by numerous traded in machines - can't expect them all to have been run for an hour to "test thoroughly". I also think you're being very harsh & somewhat outdated with regards to criticism of their previous history. Let me be brutally honest, 10-12 years ago yeah they were iffy, but in the last few years they've actually proven to be pretty good. It's my experience that the majority of stores now have disc repair machines on site, so will "repair" any discs which are damaged as they're traded in. The last dozen or so pre-owned games I've had from them haven't had a scratch on them.

Ultimately they may be telling the truth, Sony may have placed the sticker there as it COULD have been repaired by them under warranty for a customer. Sony do actually provide reconditioned machines, particularly in cases whereby warranty cases are busy, meaning they'll punt out a reconditioned console with agreement of the customer. They sold you a perfectly functioning machine - what more do you want them to do about it, you got what you paid for.

eyelinerprincess

As part of my job, I test pre-owned consoles, and our check is:

Check warranty sticker (no/damaged sticker, no buy)
Turn on (RROD or YLOD, no buy)
Check tray (you'd be amazed at the number of sticky/jammed trays that were "working perfectly when I left the house")
Check for damage (had someone in the other week trying to return a PS3 that we sold to her that had obviously been dropped - I sold it to her, it was never like that when it left the shop!)
Insert game and play (makes it a LOT easier if they're trading in a game that is already installed). Playing about for a few minutes means that we can see it working, see all the controller buttons work etc.

Sometimes consoles come back under guarantee as they've developed a problem, but that's the chance we take taking second-hand consoles. And very rarely, there's a problem we didn't spot, for example, I bought one myself and the person who traded it in had been banned for XBox Live but our firewall wouldn't let us connect to the internet for XBox Live at all that day (bloomin IT messing about again).

Kingsd316

eyelinerprincess wrote: »

As part of my job, I test pre-owned consoles, and our check is:

Insert game and play (makes it a LOT easier if they're trading in a game that is already installed). Playing about for a few minutes means that we can see it working, see all the controller buttons work etc.

And here is the problem then, you can fix a YLOD ps3 and have it working for at least an hour before it dies again, without opening the console and with no physical damage to the outside.

I dont know if you work for game or another retailer but by them suggesting in the video above that they recondition every console is complete and utter BS in my opinion

vyle

Kingsd316 wrote: »

And here is the problem then, you can fix a YLOD ps3 and have it working for at least an hour before it dies again, without opening the console and with no physical damage to the outside.

I dont know if you work for game or another retailer but by them suggesting in the video above that they recondition every console is complete and utter BS in my opinion

That video will be head office saying what they WANT every branch to do (I can't see it, due to my internet being flaky today) but in retail there is no time to do everything by the book, because they also have customers to sell, the shop to maintain, and no staff.

The staff aren't engineers, they're going to be largely untrained, with some home-grown technical knowledge and a bit of enthusiasm at best, but they won't have the time or resources to do a thorough hardware QA.

If they did, then the consoles would near enough be the same price as a brand new one.

StuC75

Also from games benefit its about cost\benefit , rather than covering the labour cost of someone stripping it down and performing any fixes for it to still breakdown.. they take the approach of let the customer perform that through everyday use and just replace as\when it breaks.. This works out cheaper for them in the longrun!.

Handsome90

Consumer rights will fall under Sale of Goods Act (SoGA). This is separate from the manufacturer's warranty. In a nutshell, if an item becomes faulty within 6 months, the onus is on the retailer to prove that you didn't abuse it. After 6 months, the onus is on you that the item was inherently faulty. The remedy proved by the retailer can be repair, replace or refund. Changing the hard drive in your PS3 shouldn't affect you from claiming under SoGA as long as you don't damage the other parts in the process.

As mentioned above, a warranty is separate from SoGA. The retailer or manufacturer can stipulate any terms and conditions that they like. You can claim under the warranty as long as you abide by those terms.

eyelinerprincess

Kingsd316 wrote: »

And here is the problem then, you can fix a YLOD ps3 and have it working for at least an hour before it dies again, without opening the console and with no physical damage to the outside.

I dont know if you work for game or another retailer but by them suggesting in the video above that they recondition every console is complete and utter BS in my opinion

I don't work for game, but another retailer. Unfortunately we don't have the time to play for an hour just to check if there's a fault, there's always a queue of customers, always work to be done. The majority of the time the customer takes the console home and we hear no more of it. The odd time, the customer comes back claiming it doesn't work and hasn't done something fundamental (syncing up a controller etc.). The odd time the customer has damaged it themselves and is trying it on (dropped it, pulled the plug out and damaged the port on a DS or PSP) . But we very rarely see a problem console come back as we test as much as we can in the time we have.

The risk is really with the retailer as we refund or replace if it's something like a YLOD and may even give a goodwill gesture if persuaded.