Identical wins

Posted on 19 May 2008 at 10:50

 

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Want to get more from your budget? Refurbished PCs are the same ones you could buy in the shops, but at much more attractive prices.

Millions of computers are sold every day. And then there's the ones that end up not being sold. Too many units in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shops clearing space for new season stock. Customers changing their minds. What happens to all these orphan systems?

In the bad old days, they might have been dumped in landfill sites or at best broken up for inefficient recycling, often thousands of miles away. But the industry has gradually twigged that it makes a lot more sense to sort them out and sell them on. Today, you can choose from thousands of PCs that have only one difference from their brand new equivalents: the price tag.

There are various ways these machines may come onto the market, and numerous terms to describe them, but they're generally known as 'refurbs'. By making one of them your next PC, you could do the environment a favour and save hundreds of pounds into the bargain.

Second chance

Does refurbished mean second-hand? Not usually. One of the most common life stories of a refurb is that it's been shipped out to a customer who's then returned it. You might expect that most returned units would be faulty ones, but in fact they're probably in the minority. There are all sorts of reasons why items come back. Surprisingly often, users fail to get products working because they don't understand them properly. And, thanks to the Distance Selling Regulations (DSR), buyers now have seven days to return almost anything they ordered on the Internet or by phone, just because they've changed their minds.

Even when something is wrong, it's often very minor, such as an internal cable that hasn't been properly attached. PCs especially are very repairable, especially by the original manufacturer or an authorised reseller, because most of their components are standard. Identify the faulty part, replace it, and the machine's back in action.

More and more of the big electronics manufacturers are getting wise to the refurb market, and it's increasingly common to find 'factory rework' units from brands such as HP's Renew being sold in a variety of outlets. Not only are these products identical to what you'd get if you paid full price, they even come with the same warranty and support entitlement.

While some makers refurbish their own stock, others prefer to turn to specialist companies such as PC Interworks, which sells to consumers through its website, www.buyit247.com. PC Interworks' Ben Frain told us about the job of preparing 'Grade 2' computers. 'Dealing with returns is a manufacturing process - we have our own production lines, highly trained technical staff and quality control.

'The goods we handle are usually less than a year old and typically 'DOA' - returned as "dead on arrival". Only about 50% have actual faults, but to ensure quality they all go through a multi-stage process of assessment and testing.' This starts with the hard disk being completely wiped, to ensure nobody will ever stumble across any data that may have been stored by the original buyer, and finishes with the date and time being set correctly so the system is ready for its new owner. If an item fails at any stage, it's replaced and the machine goes right back to step 1.

By the time it's come through all this, a PC is not only assured of being in working order, it's been more rigorously tested than it would have when originally sold.