[ravenstine]

My M1 Macbook Air was the first computer I've bought in a long time that was brand new instead of refurbished. The only reason I bought new this time was because the keyboard on my old laptop kept burning out and I didn't want to keep replacing it.

Most of my electronics were bought as refurbished, and I've never regretted it. It's surprising just how "new' a refurbished item can be at a substantial discount. And not once have I had a issues with refurbished items. (the keyboard issue for my last laptop didn't manifest until after ~6 years of use).

[gambiting]

I keep buying stuff from Amazon Warehouse based on the same principle....heavy discount for a "like new" or "very good condition" items, everything so far has been pretty much completely new, or maybe I'd guess someone opened the box once. Either way, Amazon still offers no questions asked 30 day return and 1 year warranty on everything, so it's a no brainer really.

[buildbot]

This is no longer true about the returns - I may have to go to court with amazon over a warehouse item that was empty, and then they stuck me with the non-returned item when I returned the empty box, wiped my review of the 3rd party seller (fulfilled by amazon). They are currently lying to my credit card company about the chargeback. Not fun...

[billyjobob]

Why would you return an empty box?

Legally Amazon had a contract to deliver you an item. They failed to do that, so you should have reported it as undelivered. When this has happens to me Amazon usually spend a few days “investigating” if the courier misplaced the item, then they admit it wasn’t delivered and send a replacement.

If you report it as “delivered but there’s something wrong with it” then that’s going to trigger them to request you return it, and if you return an empty box that’s going to lead to the “customer failed to return item” pathway.

[Closi]

They probably mean they opened the box and it was empty (i.e. they got sent a parcel, and the item's box was inside the parcel, but the item itself wasn't in the box).

I've worked in quite a few eCommerce companies on the fulfilment side (although not Amazon, but including Amazon sellers) and this is pretty common - the overwhelming cause is that a scammer buys a product from an online store, takes it out of the box, replaces it with rocks or something of a similar size/shape to make it weigh the right amount, then shrink wraps it to make it look like it hasn't been sold and then returns it for the full value.

However sometimes customers also lie and say that they received an empty box, when they actually had the item inside.

It is very rare that the manufacturer will ship an empty box (however it does sometimes happen).

Because of this, most eCommerce companies adopt a policy of "If the 'new' item was previously an unopened return, allow the refund, however if not, do not allow a refund". eCommerce companies track this by using different bins for returned products (or at least by not returning that product to a bin with the same SKU that is non-returned). This sucks for the customer if you are one of the unlucky people that gets a box sent empty by the manufacturer, but fortunately that's very rare (it's a tough one to resolve without lots of theft, as it's very easy for people to say that the box was empty and very hard to prove otherwise).

This is even more difficult with third party sellers, as Amazon may not have full visibility with how they are tracking returns, and those third party sellers may have different policies around 'received empty' returns (I've not seen the above in any official policy, but can confirm it is common practice - again not with Amazon but I've worked with a number of eCommerce companies with similar issues and policies).

[buildbot]

Yep, exactly this happened. I even asked them to check the shipping weight from their side, to confirm that it was the same.

[Closi]

Yeah, well there definitely isn’t a requirement for third party sellers to weigh the parcels - in almost all instances the shipping weight field is just calculated based on the packing list and known weights for each item and the packaging material. All large Amazon sellers I’ve worked for did this.

An exception to this is if it’s shipped by Amazon, as I believe they have in-line weigh scales.

Amazon as a company though is almost impossible to deal with if you need to do something outside their regular processes or procedures, and they are heavily bureaucratic from an external perspective (including to their ‘partners’). I suspect you have unfortunately reached a block on their internal flow chart that says “no refund” and the customer services operative has very little discretion to do something different.

[ziml77]

Too many people complain about things like this without seeing it from the other side. Like yeah you got screwed, but companies can't accommodate every issue that people claim they have. They'd go out of business. Even someone as big as Amazon couldn't sustain it. Word would spread about how easy it is to scam them and the number of people trying to do that would quickly ramp up. There's enough people in the world who aren't honest or who generally are but think "surely [large co] has enough money".

[buildbot]

They actually asked me to. And the box wasn't empty per-say, it was just missing the graphics card. It had the power adapters/manuals and such still, as well as the original NVIDIA box. It was a used item, so it was expected to be opened.

[gambiting]

Sure, but the main item was missing. Like other posters have said - you paid Amazon to deliver an item, that item was missing. There was nothing to return at all in my opinion and I would have refused any request to return from amazon. I know hindsight and all, but yeah. If your account is in good standing Amazon would(should?) just refund it. If you have a new account or if you did this a few times already they will be pissy about it.

[lucasmullens]

You sent Amazon an empty box? It's still their fault, but sending back an empty box and issuing a chargeback usually aren't the first things I try to get refunds from Amazon. Their support chat is usually pretty willing to give you a refund IMO (although if you've returned too much / had too much stolen over the years that might not be the case, which I'm guessing is the situation you're in)

[buildbot]

They asked me to in the first place, I called them immediately when I got the box. I sent them back what I got, the original NVIDIA box + accessories. I actually asked them to check the shipping weight IIRC :/

[akouri]

Amazon support 10 years ago used to be amazing. They were truly a customer-first company. Today, Amazon support is probably worse than Comcast. They've been winning too long.

I have starting curtailing purchases from Amazon, and ordering from any alternatives whenever possible.

[ziml77]

The impression I'm getting here is that he didn't even talk to their support. You can do returns without ever talking to a CSR. But in this case that's a stupid move because when you do a return, you're saying that you'll return the actual item. So when they get it back and the box is empty, they're going to think you're scamming them. It sounds like his very next move was to do a chargeback, which again is a dumb thing to do if he hasn't even spoken to Amazon support.

[buildbot]

I did 3 times actually, at first there was no movement on it. I opened the return with support stating that I got an empty box, which they asked me to send back to them.

[joshmanders]

As someone who had Comcast and has dealt with Amazon support I cannot disagree with this statement anymore.

My only experience with Amazon support was a failure to deliver a $600 item, Amazon not only refunded the price right away after we figured out what was going on, but also credited me $100 for my trouble.

Comcast? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.

[smoldesu]

I'm fairly sure most of their "like new" products are just returned purchases that couldn't be repackaged for whatever reason. I bought a Samsung Galaxy phone off the site a few years back, and it came with 90% of the original packaging, and the handset itself had no visible blemishes. Pretty good for a 40% discount.

[LeifCarrotson]

I suspect it's not "couldn't" but "wouldn't": It's easier to sell it at a 40% discount to customers with reduced expectations than to try to go off-script through the streamlined, automated, quality-controlled assembly/packaging process.

Raw parts in, good parts out is easier and safer than usually putting in raw parts, but sometimes putting in refurbished parts. Imagine you need something as insignificant as a replacement SIM tray, a replacement for the bent SIM tray ejector pin, and the scratch protectors, stickers, and box labels that need replacement to get that in and out. The scratch protector plastic film might be automatically applied from a massive roll as the case is conveyed out of the coating machine; it's not made to be hand applied. How would a technician guarantee that it's just the SIM tray that broke due to contamination in the injection molding machine and not a problem with the spring contacts inside the phone? The SIM ejector pin probably costs less than a penny and is automatically inserted in every hardware pack that are stuffed and weighed automatically to a fraction of a gram; do you have a technician inspect each one or just throw the old parts away and replace the whole bag?

As a controls engineer, I work hard to make sure that a knowledgeable operator can run my robotic manufacturing cells with minimal waste. The first 80% of a cell, the no-faults "happy path" takes not too much time, but I have spent hundreds - probably thousands - of hours of my life ensuring that my cells are as flexible and fault tolerant as practical. But it's really hard. Customers are always on-board when it makes financial sense, and often when it makes environmental or ethical sense, but sometimes the laws of physics and the Pandora's box of automation just require some waste and leave a particular process untenable.

[dealforager]

Same! So much so that I built a website specifically for this: https://www.dealforager.com

It's pretty bare bones, but the problem I was trying to fix was that it took me a long time to browse the Amazon Warehouse offers trying to find the best deals. Amazon doesn't make it easy since they don't show the new and used prices side by side if you search directly under the Amazon Warehouse category. There is also no way to sort by discount. I wasted many hours until one day I decided it was faster to spend a few weeks automating this process.

[LeoPanthera]

The first thing on the front page are some Apple-clone earbuds which are apparently "normally" $5000, discounted to "only" $189.

I think you have some data problems.

[dealforager]

I just look at the new price and used price, so the data problem is on Amazon's end. I have no way to tell whether an item that is sold for $5000 is truly worth $5000 or not. I have tried implementing a check for this in the past using some statistics, but I decided it's better to leave some potential bad deals on than to remove them but also remove other really good deals. I've contacted Amazon's customer service about that particular item and they told me they would forward it to the right team, but I don't know if they have policies against ridiculous prices.

[Jleagle]

"This site can’t be reached"

[dealforager]

Sorry, for some reason I have to put the "www." before the URL and forgot to do that. I edited the comment and I'll look into fixing that.

Edit: saw replies, I'll just say it's Monday morning and leave it at that.

[ddoran]

No, you misspelt forager as forger in the URL :)

[macintux]

You're missing an "a"

[boplicity]

https://dealforager.com

[rhacker]

dealfor-A-ger, like your username?

[boplicity]

I agree with this -- however, for bigger purchases, keep in mind that warranties are not always "transferable", and may not apply to used products.

[gambiting]

Amazon gives 1 year of their own warranty on any warehouse item(at least here in UK). But yes, the manufacturer might or might not honour the original warranty separately to this.

[boplicity]

Here in Canada, there's no 1 year warranty, though they do seem to allow you to buy extended warranties.

> Used products generally do not come with a manufacturer's warranty but all of our items are backed by Amazon’s return policy. If you would like additional protection, you can purchase a warranty from Square Trade to cover certain items.

Maybe there are better consumer protections in the UK?

[gambiting]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Warehouse-Deals/b?ie=UTF8&no...

"All Amazon Warehouse items are covered under legal warranty for 1 year. If your item becomes defective after the Amazon return period, Amazon will repair any defective item, and if a repair is not possible, we will refund the purchase price in accordance with Amazon's Returns Policy."

[ramraj07]

I still have fond memories of my 1000 dollar refurbished original Vaio Z. The one with a carbon fiber magnesium chassis and a Raid 0 SSD drive. Worked like a horse for years before going out. They don’t make laptops like that anymore!

[nfoz]

I'd love to try one of the new VAIOs to find out if the quality is the same.

https://us.vaio.com/collections/vaio-sx

[NikolaNovak]

I've been buying Refurbished Thinkpads for 15 years. I still have two 10-year-old T420s in active use around the household.

There are things I will NOT buy used/refurbished, such as hard drives (I always replace the drive in refurbished laptops and put the refurbished drive into secondary capacity).