Opulent Source

Recently Walmart had (still has as of this writing) refurbished computers for sale. The special is Dell Refurbished GX520 Deskkop PC with Intel Pentium 4 Processor, 2GB Memory, 500GB Hard Drive and Windows 7 Home Premium on the system. The price was $188 which is not bad at all. So we ordered a few systems and received them about two days later. Now we have purchased refurbished computers in the past and typically don’t have a problem with them.

Now this is the typical definition of refurbished - refurbished refers to “old” or used computer equipment that has been restored to like-new working condition and/or appearance or computer devices that have been sent back to the factory to fix a flaw.

So we received these two systems in and the first one we put on the bench got it all plugged in and turned it on…Wait..wait..wait..that’s right nothing came on. Popped the side and looked around and all appeared to be plugged in correctly and everything looked like it was seated correctly. No matter what we did (troubleshooting steps) it would not come on. Now, maybe if it was a customers computer we would put even more time into the system to identify exactly what the problem is. But, in this case I have no patience to pay for something that should work automatically and it does not work. So unplugged it and put it back in the box.

Now we open the second computer, plug it in and go to fire it up and you guessed it same as before nothing happens. Again we pop the side off to check the inside out hoping maybe a cable just came loose but no such luck. What we did find is this:

That’s correct…tape holding the hard drive in place. Now I explained before what refurbished is and using tape to hold a hard drive in place is “not” a part of doing a refurbish to a system. So after seeing this, again the computer goes in the box and back to Walmart.

Now I am sure this will not deter us from purchasing more refurbished computers. Typically we have very good fortune with these systems and will continue to purchase them. What I do caution is to make sure if you do buy “ANY” refurbished system that even if it works correctly when you turn it on then do yourself a favor and pop it open and see what the inside looks like. It would be terrible to have it work correctly, you sell it to a customer and then a few months later the customer has a problem and when you go to look at it you find something wrong on the inside i.e. tape holding it together.

Source:Computer Repair Blog

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