Refurbished phones?

Libby Pritchett

Libby Pritchett

New member
So, dh and I need new phones BADLY. Our poor HTCs are over 2 years old, and they are barely holding on.

We would love to get iphones (I had one once before, and I loved it - though I love my android, too), but i can't justify the cost right now. Sprint has reburbished 16gb iphones for $99, and then we'd each get $52 off of that for trading in our old phones. So, basically, for $100, we can both get 16GB iphones (not including fees and such).

I've never bought anything refurbished though, so I'm a little nervous. Anyone have any experience with this? Would you buy these if you were in our shoes?
 
Personally I think refurb'd phones are better than brand new ones. They are carefully gone over with a fine tooth comb, and they look brand new again. Id do it in a heart beat.
 
I think it depends on the instance. I have a friend that has only ever used refurbished phones and he's never ever had a problem but someone else got one once and it went south quickly.

It's worth heading down to see the phone and play with it a bit.
 
I just did research on refurbished cameras, but in the end I found a sale that brought the cost of a new camera and lens too close to the refurbished price to make it worthwhile to take the chance. The research I did convinced me that most refurbished items are fine to buy as long as they're factory refurbished (ie, refurbished by the maker, not the seller). Their biggest drawback can be a much shorter warranty. In the case of my camera, it would have been 90 days vs 1 year. If the warranties are very different, people seem to recommend buying an extended warranty with refurbished items in case you're one of the few unlucky ones who has a bad experience.

So I guess my answer is that my research convinced me that factoryefurbished items are safe to buy, but whether I'd actually buy one depends on how much of a price difference there is once I added a warranty.
 
rach3975 said:
So I guess my answer is that my research convinced me that factoryefurbished items are safe to buy, but whether I'd actually buy one depends on how much of a price difference there is once I added a warranty.
Click to expand...

All 3 of ours were factory refurbed
 
I've had great luck with factory refurbed items. My current laptop is one. My monitor is another. And we have a digital photo frame that is a refurb also. I haven't gotten a phone. I suppose a lot of it depends on make & model. Some tech items are more prone to failure even new and the refurb just replaces the inadequate failed part with another new one just like it. My brother went through a string of refurbed laptops that all had the same overheating issue because the fans were crap. But it was a make/model issue not a refurb issue.
 
To me, $50 per iphone is worth the chance. Especially if you can get a decent warranty on it. But I think phones are pretty severely abused, so at the full price of that refurb, I wouldn't do it.
 
I'd just wait for the iphone5 to come out then get a 4s since they will drop in price. You should still be able to get a trade in for your droids to take a little off the price
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I didn't realize it was so close to time for the announcement about the iphone 5 (press conference on Sept 12, I think?). So, I think I'll just wait a couple of weeks and see what happens then.
 
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