Hard To Believe This Person Is Serious

[Rob Jarratt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Ali via cctalk
> Sent: 26 March 2021 15:14
> To: 'Richard Pope' <mechanic_2 at charter.net>; 'General Discussion: On-Topic
> and Off-Topic Posts' <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Subject: RE: Hard To Believe This Person Is Serious
> 
> > Rob,
> >      Could it be that they get identical drives that don't work. Some
> > of the drives have bad platters or heads and other drives have bad
> > interface cards but the platters and heads are ok. So they take the
> > good cards and put them on the drives with the good platters and heads
> > and then label the drive as being refurbished?
> > GOD Bless and Thanks,
> > rich!
> > P.S. I feel that around $300 USD is on high side unless they plan on
> > hand delivering the item to the client!
> 
> No,
> 
> Refurbished to these guys means "let's roll the dice". 95% of the time things
> will work (HDD being much more risk of course but boards, etc. generally
> work). If it works great they just made enough money to cover their entire
> inventory of refurbished "whatever". If it doesn't they are just out the cost
> of the shipping which as someone pointed out was about 7 Euros.
> 
> Sometimes they try to get clever. I bought two Seagate HDDs (ST32550Ns I
> believe) form a seller in northern California "refurbished and guaranteed" off
> of eBay. Each drive cost $10. Shipping to southern California was at $35 for
> UPS ground. Given that the total price (price + S&H) was ok for me I went
> ahead. Both drives arrived DOA. Seller tried refunding just the price of the
> drives and tried to keep the S&H. Pretty clever scam and would work on
> most people as the seller refunded the cost of the item and S&H is "non-
> refundable". S&H was probably under $10 so they would have made $25 to
> have me dispose of their junk. Again thank goodness for eBay money back
> guarantee - eBay refunded the rest of the money post haste.
> 
> I know of one seller who I trust to actually test before shipping and that’s
> about it.
> 
> -Ali

Yes, that is my suspicion that they don't do anything at all, that is why one day I am going to take the time to ask them what they do to refurbish them, just to see what they say. I seem to remember asking once and not getting a reply, hardly surprising!

Regards

Rob