Are there any companies you avoid?

[Wayne Luke]

Originally Posted by davidw

LOL - Wal-Mart does that too, except they skip the refurbished part - they just put it back on the shelf.

When I was working for an ISP locally, we had a customer that had trouble getting on dial-up. Her Vista machine would not load the drivers that came with the system, so she returned it to Wal-Mart.

A week later, an old man came in for similar reasons. He mentioned the system already had a username and password but someone at Wal-Mart who worked in electronics helped him reset the password. When I looked at the machine, I noticed right off the bat it was the exact same machine that the other person had that would not load the drivers. He took it back as well.

All stores do that unless there is something visually damaged on the device. Most discount them and sell them as "Open Box" items which are non-returnable. That is the path that Wal-mart locally follows. One reason why I never purchase open box items. In California if you purchase a refurbished item and it wasn't marked as such, you can actually sue the company that sold it. They are required to mark refurbished items as such and not sell them as new.