I've seen a few Rossman streams with officially "refurbished" macbooks that were absolutely foul inside. Boards that looked like they had been left on a preheater over lunch, rubber wedges to "cure" a cracked joint, all sorts of awful shit. The leaked stories from the sweatshop that did the work were 100% consistent with the awful quality.
Admittedly this was a few years ago. Has apple mended their ways or are they still on the "used car salesman" grindset?
Are these Apple refurbished, or bought from a third party like Best Buy or Amazon? I’ve bought plenty of Apple refurbished products (directly from Apple) over the years and they always look like new (including 100% battery health).
Third parties and resellers though I’m convinced just call their returns/open box units that appear to be in decent condition “refurbished.”
You have a phone with a real, but subtle fault. Something not caught by the normal set of tests. You return it for repair, get sent a new one, they replace the battery in your old one and put into stock as 'reconditioned'.
My phone is perfect, save for a worn out battery. I send it in for battery replacement, they send me yours. Now I've swapped my perfect phone for your faulty phone - and paid $70 to do so.
It would depend on a countries consumer laws. I used to work for AASP's in Australia and they definitely used refurished phones for replacements and refurished parts for the Mac repairs. Not everyone who uses this site lives in America...