REVIEW Buying refurbished Laptop off Ebay - An Interesting Experience

Hmmm.. after seeing this special on Ozbargain

(1) [Refurb] Dell Latitude 7490 14" FHD Touch i5-8350U 16GB RAM 256GB SSD Win11 (Excellent Battery Health) $425 + Delivery @ UN Tech - OzBargain

I decided to buy a machine to muck around with..

Need to be a quad core, 16gb ram and an upgradable SSD and a okay battery.. Thunderbolt 3 would be a good bonus..

Decided to stick with dell business latitude range.. unfortantely thunderbolt 3 was optional. on most of the machines, and from the ebay ads. often difficult to figure out whether the mahcine had it or not. More often the i7 would include it..

Eventually I noticed there was a small supply of Latitude 5290 2 in 1. i7 on ebay.. (Grade A)

Reviews on the model were good
Usage, performance and verdict - Dell Latitude 5290 2-in-1 review | TechRadar

I ordered one a(Grade A refurb), with a pen, keyboard and charger and 20%off!!!.

Arrived promptly.. no dents.. brand new battery with zero wear, new AC adaptor, Pen (flat battery.. AAAA size.. who the hell keeps these at home).. minor scratches on the case and keyboard wear, lots and lots of scraches on the screen, from the keybaord impression.. and with thunderbolt 3 - bonus..

really happy with the machine and form factor, pretty much a Surface Tablet rip off.. could put up with the screen scratches.. heck they are all going to be like that right!! from the keyboard... Then I heard the fan turn on... pretty much had the death rattles... of a fan rubbing on metal and about to die at any stage..

I was debating on whether to keep it or not.. or try to get it fixed ...
meanwhile.. noticed there where only 3 of the machine left out of around 20 at the start.. and the 20% special was still on..

I got the approval from an RMA return.. (I asked for a replacement)... but to make sure I didnt' miss out...
I ordered two more machines (slightly cheaper for a pair)..

I wanted at least two machines.. (one to give to my old man..) one to play around myself.. and one for the kids.. or a spare..

The new machines arrived, pretty much.. as I sent to old one away for repair / replacement or refund..

The new machines were mixed shape.. .. both had perfect screens, one had a new battery, the other had a 72% battery, both keyboards were pretty rancid, and needed a lot of cleaninh.. one pen was perfect.. the other pretty much faulty and in parts.. and the SD card cover was missing on one.. both with the bigger 65W ac adaptors (secondhand),both with thurnderbolt 3..

Was happy with both machines otherwise.. they cleaned up okay.. and who really uses a pen..
One machine worked perfectly...
the other (with the new battery) could not boot up without being plugged into the AC adaptor.. It could run off battery. suspend, hibernate.. but could not cold boot.. I am updated bios, drivers, cleared the RTC, reisntalled windows 11, reisintall to windows 10.. nothing worked.. pretty 5 hours or wasted time..

The fact I had an identifical machine, that worked perfectly.. pointed to a hardware faults.

I messaged the seller, who said there were no more replacements machines, and they would refund me the costs of the faulty machines upon return..

I have since received the refund.. for the 1st machine... and have just sent back the second faulty machine..

.. around the same time... a saw a special for a Thinkpad P50 machine on ebay..(from a different seller) also meant to be grade A and good battery. for $337.00.. order that as well..

Arrived in good nick.. definite extensive keyboard wear.. screen good.. battery around 70%..
crack in the plastic access plate... not enough to return.. but enough to be irritated.. by this so called Grade A machine. Presume, I could get a refund.. given.. the seller, no longer has any machines left.. I doubt I could get a replacement.

Summary...
Ordered 4 "Grade A" laptops from ebay..
two were pretty much faulty...and "unusuable" to some degree --> refund..

All machines had separate faults and damage... which I would NOT expect from a "Grade A machine"
It seems.. rather than having a bunch.. of really good condition machines.. all the issues / faults are spread amongst the machines... (given one with a dogdy pen, but a good batttey and goodscreen) (another with a good pen, dogdy battery and good screen) and the other with a Scratched screen and good pen and good battery) to avoid them being deal breakers..

Unless you bought multiple machines.. you would be completley ignorant of this..

Lots and lots of wasted time..
two trips to the post office to pick up the machines.
two trips to the post office for the returns..
Hours of trouble shooting the faulty machines..

Was it worth it..!!! Probably not...
Okay if you purchase for yourself and can spend the time..
Asking someone else (computer illterate) to purchase one.. is probably minefield..
I also think.. that the overall conidtion of machines.. is well overstated.
Grade A... means well used and loved without major faults or cracks, that would limit use of the machine.

Each of the machines.. cosmetically, was worse that my kids school laptops.. that have made the school journey for 3 years, and worse than any of the laptops I have owned or bought from OCAUers..

I guess. one must remember, that the people preivously using these machines, were corporates, who pretty much treated them like hated work items, rather than their own personal belonging..


Caveat Emptor!!!!

P.S. the only good news, is the ebay refund mechanism, seems to work well..


Update...

the Thinkpad P50 has a faulty F3 and Tab key...
Took me about 2 weeks to figure this out...!!!
Looks like this one, may need to go back...
about $100 for the replacement part!!!


Update 2..
the so called single good 7290. has the ocasional fan rattle. at certain angles.. and only occsasionnally.. not enough. for me to send it back.. although I should have.. i like the form factor and the machine otherwise...

 

Nice write off. Interesting the condition that the A Grade one was in

 

They were all so called "A grade" machines..
Personally, I would have labelled them all b-grade... all were definitely well used and abused... without damage..

I hate to see grade B machine.. is.. given there is no grade c

presumably

Grade "A" = okay
Grade "B" = bad but usuable...

 

Yeah that's frustrating

 

It varies in corpland, some users will absolute trash there work laptop, others take care of them. Personally I wouldnt buy a used laptop off ebay, I have had better luck here.

 

I've bought a couple off here,

Codition usually much better, as the seller usually describes the machine fully... and OCAUers tend to be a bit OCD in general
onbivously there is very little recourse for remedy for a private sale.. if things go wrong..

 

Interesting on the grading, I worked for a place grading assets (mostly laptops) and we won't give a device an A Grade unless its brand new. Max allowed was B, any fault took another letter off, and 2 faults+ was automatically a D. Whoever you're getting these off is definitely doing something dodgy to have this many fucked machines

 

Sorry to hear about your experience.

I ordered a 2nd hand HP Elitebook 830 G5 i7 from ebay 6 weeks ago and have had a pleasant experience. Description was "Good - Refurbished - medium scratches". Screen, keyboard and trackpad area were like new. A single scratch on the outside and a slight corner dent.

Happy days for me.

 

I bought a dell for my Niece school laptop from one of those ebay refurb mobs.. It was one of the best Ebay rated ones hoping to avoid too much risk. and not the cheapest (but not much difference) Was also quite happy with it, came nicely packaged in a generic laptop box, and was as described, only very minor scratches .

your exp makes me a little nervous to do it again , but combined with Ebay 20% of sales which this vendor (and a few others) ended up in, it was quite a bargain

 

There's definitely some good deals around whens there's coupons also as well..
It all depends on the condition the machine is in...

I wonder who actually buys those full priced 3-4 year old units for $600... especially ... when specials lke this come around every so often..

(1) HP 15.6" Ryzen 5 15S-EQ3047A, AMD R5-5625U, FHD, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD $797 + Delivery ($0 to Metro/ C&C/ in-Store) @ Officeworks - OzBargain

 

so i just had an eBay Lenovo T490s delivered today

classed as Grade A, and was pretty spot on, pretty mint condition

only problem is, they sent me a T490 instead of a T490s

don't think they have any more in stock, so it's likely back to the drawing board (the only OW near me with that HP is a little far)

 

Doh...

 

Bought one of those 5290's and sent back due to the white spots on lcd

From a different seller got a 7490 and was in mint condition, upgraded the ssd myself and has been great

Always a risk on ebay but at least you can get a refund easy despite the time wasting

 

Far out...

Started using, the Lenovo thinkpad P50, i bought two weeks ago a bit more..
discovered it has two faulty keys on the keyboard, the tab key and the F3...

thats 3 out of 4 laptops.. that I bought off ebay which are faulty / need reapirs..

that's 75% failure rate!!!

 

Imma just chime in to say i enjoyed the term rancid to describe the keyboards, reminds me also mentioning about being Surface knockoffs, that thats why i would never buy a 2nd hand Surface laptop, everytime you see one they have that horrible cloth keyboard and its covered in hand oil, food and just general stank/funk...i throw up in my mouth a bit every time i see one listed....as far as im concerned, you buy a Surface laptop, you shouldnt be allowed to list it for resale

And there i went again, just thinking about them made me nauseous...

Occasionally ill buy some secondsies laptops off ebay for friends etc. Got a pair of HP EliteBook 840 G5's (a good safe bet for general use..i5-8250U and decentish battery life secondsies) recently and got close-ish battery reports before buying compared to what they arrived with. One ended up having a display issue and i had 0 issues returning it, the seller, a refurbisher was fantastic...im sharing this because that shizz is rare...customer service.

My personal best score was a Dell high end model a few years back, sold as faulty for $70. I suspected it was a repasting candidate from the noted reasons for selling as faulty "random shutdowns etc". Sure enough, got it, pulled it apart and an hour later with fresh paste it was cranking along liek nobodys business.Being a bit christian (which is ironic as im an atheist), i emailed the seller and said id fixed it in about an hour and would he like it back at same price as i bought it. Heard nothign for 3 weeks. Seller finally contacted me back and said he'd been on holiday, that he was gobsmacked id fixed it and offered it back to him, and told me he;d already replaced it. I ended up paying it forward by passing it onto a friend as a gift.

Second best was the laptop i currently use, an ASUS UX410 (i5-8250U) - guy selling it for $150 last year as it was "getting slow". Of course it was it only had the cheapest storage config, a sub 5400rpm Toshiba spinning drive. Again being a bit christian i pointed out to him before picking up that all he needed to do was fit an SSD or NvME drive, but he was like "i know, i dont have the time". I did, about 10 minutes after i got it home. Boot time went from 2 minutes to 12 seconds with an NvME....ill spend 10 minutes every damn time given that choice at that price. The thing also still gets over 6 hours of battery life....

 

They keep saying refurb, but I don't think they know what this means...

 

Just means used to them.

 

Even worse. Refurbished means it was most likely returned for a fault, the fault has been "fixed" and most of the bodily juices have been wiped off with a mostly clean rag.
If you're lucky it's ex fleet and not broken and they'll use alcohol to clean it, but rainwater with salmonella and a bit of dishwashing liquid is cheaper.

The problem with the whole grading thing is it's subjective.
The owners of places selling refurbs aka broken shit fixed cheaply want even the most disgusting, fucked laptops to be grade A+++ and sold for $999 from a brand new price of $1299. Even if the computer has been written off and JB or Harvey have replaced it completely. And even if the computer is 2-5 years old.

If you have a fussy, anal, obsessive and pedantic staff member doing the grading, restoration and testing processes, well you'll be really happy with the computer.
The kind of person who cleans old computers for fun... But I imagine most staff like that have quit within the last 2 years. They've probably been driven away from their bosses scummy cost cutting business practices and customers.

The units can also often sit for a few months so when the broken computer comes in with a battery at 70% (any lower and it's typically replaced) by the time it's fixed, and cleaned, and sold and shipped a common complaint is that the battery has gone down more.

I would think...

 

The ebay reseller has just back to me…

return for refund… they dont bother fixing…
Damn… already spent hours.. cleaning the outside.. upgrading the ssd and reinstalling everything from scratch…

 

The resellers selling hundres of identical Dell latitudes, it s Safe to say the bulk are just ex Govt or other large corp , rather than being 'returned for a fault' .

They get rid of them as soon as warranty is up regardless if they're working perfectly still, and if you stick to A grade, means they've likely just spent their time docked on a desk in an air conditioned, relatively dust free office. with minimal keyboard and track use . B grade with scratches all over them obv means they've been used in the field or rep's etc and probably had a harder life and more keyboard/trackpad use

I think if you stick specifcally to the former, and from a high feedback seller with MS refurb cert (FWIW) , least you know they're not super dodgy, and the gamble isn't too great for the $$ IMO (actually I'd say it's quite low) .

Certainly better than paying the same $ from a random private seller. Even with the drama's Kelvin's had, at least they've refunded / dealt with it. good luck getting that from someone on marketplace (lol!)