Refurbished, eh? And just what does that mean, really?

If you look in the dictionary, "refurbished" means "polished" or "cleaned up". Lots of things are sold in both conventional stores and on the Net under as "Refurbished" (sometimes even "Factory refurbished"), often with a manufacturer's warranty, and often at what looks like a really attractive price. If the manufacturer is standing behind it, what's the risk? After all, most things either fail right away or they last until it's already time to upgrade to the newer version anyway, right?

Well, if you've bought a few things like this, you'll already be familiar with the reality.

A few cases in point:

- My daughter bought a refurbished Dell D600 laptop from a large, well-respected local computer store; wisely, she also bought the one-year extended warranty. It started becoming somewhat unreliable at about 11 months after purchase - but she was in the middle of prep for finals, and couldn't do without it just then, so she coaxed it along until the term was over. The next day, it went belly-up. The original warranty had done likewise two days prior - but the extended warranty was just starting, so everything's peachy, right? Sort of - the repair took over a month. Nearly a year later, as the end of the extended warranty approached, she decided to sidestep the possibility of a second panic-time failure, and bought a brand-new laptop to replace the D600. Almost two years of service for the price she paid would have been OK for a unit with half again the performance and without the month of absence from availability while being repaired; it was a so-so bargain as it stood, however.

- From the same store, not long after the D600 was purchased, I picked up a refurb IBM desktop as a platform to update into from my old Windows 2000 system. The first one was wonky right out of the box; boot time could be as much as six or seven minutes, and often it would just hang during boot and go nowhere. The system went back to the store for exchange, and we fired up a second one right there to make sure it would boot into Windows - and then we tried a third. That one's still going, four years later. Neither box showed any sign of having been previously opened and then returned, either, so these were "bad as received from the supplier" units.

- From Sony's website, I picked up a manufacturer-refurb compact CD player at what looked like a really nice price. Like most "refurb" items, it was indistinguishable from new. It worked for about two-thirds of the warranty period, and then the display quit showing anything. I could still make it play using the wired remote, but the on-cover controls and display just didn't work at all. I shipped it back, and they shipped me a replacement which worked properly for just long enough to get a week past the end of the warranty, and then it developed the same problem. With little to lose, I dismantled the unit and cleaned the contacts on the ribbon cable that connected to the display and switches - and it worked for another couple of months. I asked a store salesman at one of the local electronics places about whether he'd heard of any problems with that style of unit; he said "Do you see any of them on our display? There's a reason - and we usually try to stock everything from Sony that we can get." I now suspect that the reason these were being sold cheap as "refurbished" was that they knew there was a problem with that ribbon cable's connector, and they wanted to dump them with a reduced warranty to cut their losses.

- From eBay, I fairly recently picked up a manufacturer-refurb FujiFilm S2800HD camera; I already had an S1500, and was happy with it, but I wanted the extra resolution and increased zoom capability of the S2800. On receipt, there were two problems. First, it was not supplied with a lens cap - which, to be fair, wasn't promised, but since nothing but the original one fits and works properly, that's a significant omission which was not noticed in the description because one tends to think of the lens cap as being a part of the camera by default. Getting the cap took two weeks; not fun. Then, cap in hand at last, I finally installed the batteries and slipped in a memory card - and on the first test shot, it became obvious that the unit had a futzed-up CCD. (The CCD is the thing in the camera that actually converts light to electrical signals, which the camera's other electronic parts can read to create the digital image file.) I called Fuji, got instructions on how to return it, did so, and here I sit, almost a month later, still with no camera. They say that they just finally got the camera into the repair department this week - about three weeks after they received it. The forecast time to repair is two weeks from when it gets to this point. Add the probable week in transit coming back, and the camera will have far less than 30 days of its 90-day factory warranty remaining when I finally get it. I am not thrilled about this, as you can probably tell. (But wait, that's no all!  The unit had to be sent back TWICE MORE before it finally arrived in fully working condition.  On the first trip, it came back with the autofocus not working, and after they supposedly fixed *that*, the zoom lost about half its range - and caused the camera to shut down.  The third time that it returned from repair, it was fully operational.  It took nearly six months altogether.)

What these experiences add up to, in my opinion, is this:

Manufacturers and resellers both are quite willing to take large lots of only partially tested (or even perhaps untested but "believed working") gear, clean it up so that it looks pretty, put it in a fresh box, and sell it as "refurbished". They also seem willing to take known-troublesome models and dispose of the stock via this route; after all, the shorter warranty means that the unit's got a better chance of lasting long enough to be somebody else's problem given the short warranty provided.

What does this mean to the consumer? Basically, "Refurb" should be viewed as synonymous with "untested, possibly broken, possibly troublesome, and possibly with undisclosed defects that will cause it to fail before the end of the warranty that would have been applied to the corresponding new product."

I certainly won't be buying anything with that label again. And I'm not sure that "recertified" is much better, so I plan to avoid those studiously as well. If you decide to take the plunge - I'd advise that you hedge your bets as best you can.