Buying refurbished Alienware 15 from Ebay?

Hi there,

I am from UK and really want to geta new laptop, first aimed at mid range 500 - 800 £ but then thought that can spend another 200 £ to have higher power to play some games (looking at 4 years of service). I have read a lot about Gigabyte P34w v3 1080 £ 1.7 kg 14 inches 970gtx and core i7, but many people face problem with throttling and overheating so my choice stopped at Alienware 15 with 970gtx and core i7 it is a bit bulkier but I hope it can manage a longer service than a 14 inch heat bomb.

Looking at the prices I got a bit confused as laptop's price starts around 1250 - 1350 £ where on Ebay there are some refurbished alienwares for around 999 - 1080 £ like this one

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Alienware...549?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4d354aba1d

The question is it worth buying from Ebay, or are those laptops probably the ones which had lots of issues and were returned by fellow users back to Dell?

Please any advice?

 

Buy direct from the dell outlet:

http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandId=7&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1&l=en&s=dfh

The majority (if not all) of the UK ebay sellers flogging refurb'd dells just grab them from the outlet and sell them on at a profit. You'll have to keep an eye on the outlet page- systems are added seemingly irregularly to the UK outlet and you need your cash ready to go when you see one you like. I'm also unsure about the warranty on the ebay ones- my understanding is the clock is ticking as soon as the system is out of the factory and you need to have ownership transferred to you, which requires the cooperation of the seller.

For comparison, the system on its way to me atm (ETA monday) cost me £786 inc. VAT (delivery is free from the outlet until the end of the month) ; i7-4710HQ with the R9 M295X. 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, 1080p etc. Scratch and dent admittedly, but still a rather large saving. At that price (even given the R9 which is only between a 965/970 (fine for me though)) it's cheaper than a comparable Clevo, with a superior warranty and far superior support IME). Will update when it arrives.

As to the outlet systems having issues- they carry the same warranty a "regular" retail system does and Dell test them- costs them money to send a tech out! Interestingly enough my system is coming from EMF- European Manufacturing Facility (in Poland) itself, not from the UK so they should be "factory standard".

 

Hello mate - I purchased a 17 R2 i7 4710hq 980m 16GB ram from this same seller. I negotiated a price down from £1300 to £1100 by collecting in person and saving his eBay/Paypal fees he may very well do the same if you ask. The guy is very honest and I can vouch for him 100%.

 

I'd take the outlet recommendation Those machines come with a warranty and all

 

the warranty is transferable

 

I bought mine refurb from tigerdirect and can confirm that warrranty is transferable. all they care is the service tag or the service number that is located under the laptop.

 

Thanks to everyone for answers this is very helpful!

 

As a follow up, my scratch and dent AW15 arrived from the dell outlet a few days back.

The amount of "damage" is ridiculously small- a tiny (<2cm) fine scratch on the silver lid, a small amount of cosmetic scuffing on one corner under the laptop, a few very very small pry marks along one edge of the access flap underneath and a miniscule scratch above the keyboard. None really visible unless you look for them.

Overall, very pleased and a seemingly stupid amount of saving for insignificant "damage". I wonder if Dell were shifting the last of the 4710/M295X motherboards.