Think those warranty parts are new? Think again

for me, the new stuff i've bought from apple actually had more problems than the replacements they gave me.

i rarely have problems with replacement refurbished products. iono, maybe coz they test it out more than the new ones?

i've had 3 replacements ipods and 1 replacement iphone 3GS from apple, all refurbished (iphone: u can tell if your serial begins with 5K). All the ipods looked brand new, no swirly scratches or dents.

My iphone had a tiny tiny scratch on the top chrome bezel but you can't notice it unless u have very good eyesight or have a magnifying glass :p. It's just like brand new, without the bleeding backlight and red tinted camera my new one had.

I would have no hesitation to get anything refurbished from apple.

Using used parts is part of the business. I worked at a repair company for six years. We repaired computers, cellphones and telco equipment. Used parts were part of the business. I don't know of ANY repair shops that use solely new parts. That would be cost prohibitive and believe me the companies you are working for are very interested in keeping there repair costs down. We would go out and buy old broken phones or electronic equipment just to salvage the usable parts from them. Unless it is a cosmetic item it is much cheaper to buy a lot of damaged or broken pieces of equipment and pay someone to remove the parts. Most repair shops supply a warranty, since it is required to get the business from the OEM, so from the repair shops point of view there is not a problem. If it breaks again they will fix it for you. When we received the same unit back three times for the same failure we would mark it as unrepairable and junk the phone or piece of equipment and replace it with a substitute. The substitute was not new but used.

Putting a used HHD into a computer that's still under warranty? Replace a known defect part with an identical USED bit that's known to be prone to fail? After paying extra for AppleCare? How would you feel about getting used front-end, brake parts, oil filters, etc. for your car? How long do you expect it to last, being maintained like this? EPIC FAIL, Sir Steve.

I had a topcase replacement on my MBP and it came complete with free crumbs under the keyboard. Nice.

Of course there is a big difference between a refurbished iPhone or iPod and almost any other refurbished product. Just where do people use their iPhones most to surf the web? That's right. In the bathroom. So it is likely that your shiny refurbished iPhone was used by some stranger while they were taking a dump.

Ewwww!

I paid for a brand new Sky HD box, Less than a month (if I remember right) it became faulty. The Sky bloke came round and installed one of the first models of SKHD boxes which I think was about two years old???.
In my eyes, thats taking the pi@@, to give me a box nearly, if not already past it life expectancy and with older tech and known to be buggy as hell.
I had paid for a Brand new box. and yes I felt I was entitled for what i paid for.
If I had bought a brand new car, and it developed a fault. I would not expected to be given a model two years old as a replacement.

Of cause I kicked up a fuss. and after being told be one person to the next for a couple of days, about I should read the small writing in my agreement.
I finally got some who new wrong from right and got what i had paid for.

All said and done, It seems this industry standard practise is being abused, possibly because there is no actual STANDARD to speak of.

Of course they are remanufactured. Think about it. You give them a used phone...and now u have a working "used" phone. What did you lose?

It is not a replacement policy, it is a promise to give you an equivalently working device.

Plus you get a new battery (70 dollar value), and new enclosure (cannot be purchased without replacement). It's actually a great deal.

Plus if you have worked with service parts before... you know that remanufactured parts go through much more quality control than new parts do. It's a pretty decent deal.

This article makes me irritated. It's irresponsible reporting. Not news, not remarkable to the company you chose to single out, and by the way, while distasteful in the wrong light, this is a practice that we should ENCOURAGE our companies to do. The people we should be chastising here are people like the writer of this article. The "American Consumer". Our throw away culture and insistence that things be completely replaced instead of fixed is just ugly. Filling up our landfills, wasting precious resources (Lots of rare metals in those logic boards), and for what? These aren't Kleenex, they're expensive and intricate electronic equipment, and if they're tested to work fine I'm happy to see them put to good use.

I'm not just being an Apple fanboy here either, as this is a good best practice of MOST computer manufactures (in fact, I'm not aware of any that don't, and if you could find THAT company I suggest you report on it... because THAT is news.)

Buy Refurbished. Recycle your old computers to the Salvation Army or local schools. And if it breaks, take it in for christ's sake. It's a little bit of your time but on a larger scale much more efficient.

At the company from which I retired from after 25 years, a remanufactured part got much better testing than a new part. We needed to ensure that whatever was wrong with it was really fixed.

Who cares? As long as it works and does not needlessly pad the landfill, I'm game. With time-limited usefulness (how many non-luddites have phone older than 3 years?), we are practically only renting the device to gain access to currently fashionable functions anyhow.