Alienware refurbished. Something fishy?

[mtndew]

I'm in the market to build/buy a new desktop, and after i wasnt able to find any refurbished/recertified alienwares for sale either on their site or through other resellers, I placed a call to their customer service department. I asked if any refurbished systems were for sale and was told no. I then asked what they did with returns. The initial rep didnt know and I got scaled up to a manager. He told me that they dont sell any refurbished either themselves or through resellers. He said that they use ALL the returned systems internally.

Does that strike anyone else as fishy that they can and do internally use all the systems that are sold and returned nationally? That must be at least a couple hundred systems, and to use all these overpowered systems internally as workstations is hardly as profitable as selling them as recertified.

Am I the only one that thinks there's something fishy here? Anyone with anymore knowledge of this issue/ anything to add?

 

[fredtam]

Alienware sucks.

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: fredtam
Alienware sucks.

true dat

 

[beatle]

Sounds fishy to me. While they're probably a halfway decent sized company, their spare parts bin has to be somewhat large. Perhaps they sell them to their employees at cost?

 

[Davegod]

The vast majority of faults would just be fixed and returned to the guy who bought it in the first place.

I wouldnt be at all surprised if the "return and get money back" PC's had any problem hardware replaced and then be sold again - it would of course have to be in perfect condition. Refurbs are faulty hardware that has been repaired - most of the hardware that Alienware gets as faulty they would return to the manufacturer. I gather "refurb" or b-grade stock you see on some e-tailers is all stuff that wont be taken back by whoever supplied them, e.g. because customer returned it without manual or they think the fault was caused by e-tailer/end customer. I doubt Alienware would be too bothered about the occasional missing motherboard manual, and would have ample spare accessories.

Actually, I'm not sure what's meant to be fishy?

 

[johnjkr1]

Its not really that fishy. It's likely that they use the returned systems as spare parts for other systems when they break. And since all the parts are industry standard, they can probably just test them and put them back into new systems to sell.

 

[Alptraum]

I am not really sure whats fishy about that either. Many years ago I worked for a small/medium sized computer company (we sold maybe 500 to 2000 systems a month). We never sold refurbished/returned items to customers either. Generally we would just return any faulty parts to whoever we got them from or kept them for internal use. I am not totally sure what we did with every returned system as I didn't run the wharehouse or accounting departments. I did however run the system building department and know that once a system was built by us it never came back through. Not even as parts.

 

[mtndew]

good to know then. I guess I'm just overly skeptical of a company trying to pass something used off to the consumer as new. After seeing the sheer number of refurbished systems at dell, gateway, ibm, hp/compaq, and even systemax, i started to wonder why there was not a single one for sale from alienware.

It sounds though like maybe my worries are unfounded.

 

[imported_Phil]

We (the company I work for) sell refurbished PCs and parts that have been returned- 90% of the stuff returned to us is not actually faulty and can therefore be sold again. However, management inform me that here in the UK it's illegal to sell anything like that as "new", and we have to mark the price down or make the customer aware of that.

Still, a reduction in the amount of stuff returned to us would be nice, as it's almost always the fault of the user. The other day I had a guy scream at me because I would only offer store credit for a cable that he insisted did not work on "many systems" yet it worked fine on two of ours. Our big & burly security guard kept a close eye on him

 

[beatle]

I believe it's also illegal here in the US to sell items as "new" when they have been used. Personally, I buy refurbished things to save a couple bucks when I can and most of the time they look (and smell!) brand new.