Buying Thinkpad on ebay?

Hi!

I am thinking of buying a new Thinkpad W510 and spend some time surfing the net for the best offers. There are Thinkpads with good prices on ebay, but I haven't bought anything there before and hesitate a bit.

I wanted to ask if anybody bought Thinkpads on ebay and what your experience was.
Is there a big difference between new and manufacturer refurbished machines?
And did you have any problems with warranty?

Thank you!

 

The experiences on eBay can vary much more widely than buying from Lenovo or an internet retailer, but you'll probably pay less on eBay or the internet, hence the dilemma. As always read the descriptions carefully. Some sellers push refurbed off as new or can be optimistic in their item descriptions. It may have warranty, but if it's refurbed the warranty is not upgradeable, which means it has less value. You can look the warranty up on Lenovo's website. There's a link in the sticky, but for refurbed machines the warranty look up can often be wrong until the database is updated. If you want to confirm the warranty I would suggest calling sales and asking what you're warranty upgrade options are. They'll know if it's been refurbed. Once you get outside of the 45 from sale you won't be able to dispute it with Paypal.

Sometime you can get very good deals on eBay. My own X200t came from eBay. It was open box, but looked new and had a three year warranty with accidental coverage, which was not mentioned in the item description. While that was a great deal, other notebooks I've bought on eBay have been not so good. The good part is Paypals dispute process is fairly painless if you can wait to get you money back. Paypal almost always decides in favor of the buyer. You'd only be on the hook for the shipping charges back to the seller, which should range from $15-25. That's much less than the restocking fee you'll pay at Lenovo or an internet retailer. Good Luck and welcome to NBR.

 

I've purchased several ThinkPads on eBay, from my first T21 all the way up to my current T400. I would highly recommend you using Paypal for the transaction if you are willing to use it, and only purchasing from sellers with a 99-100% feedback rating. If a user has several thousand sales under their belt it's usually safe to assume they're a shop/business of some kind and are generally a little more easier to deal with than private parties. However, you can find some great deals from private parties as well; I picked up this fairly loaded T400 for just about $600 back in Feburary; a pretty good deal back then and a pretty god price even now.

 

Thank you for your replies. Just found one offer:

Lenovo ThinkPad W510 I7-820QM 15.6 8G 320G (43192RU) - eBay (item 150500835871 end time Oct-03-10 15:58:51 PDT)

What do you think about it?

 

some early model W510 has overheating problems, so make sure this laptop has warranty still.

 

Yeah, this one has warranty. It is very important for me too. It's good that warranty can easily be checked on the net.

The other thing I found out while reading Lenovo's warranty web pages is that refurbished machines do not have international warranty. And that is a deal breaker for me.

 

Be SURE to get one with a good warranty. I bought my T61P on Ebay in a sealed box. It's been great and I still have it. Buy it from Ebay with the same expectations as you'd have from Lenovo and nothing can go wrong (if you have high expecations and paper to back them up).
Renee