It depends on what the manufacturer defines as refurbished or recertified. To me, car dealerships use the term recertified which means that it has been thoroughly inspected and they would gladly put their seal of approval on it, and any remaining warranty would still carry over. A Honda dealership I purchased my first used car from included a 5-month/5000-mile warranty on a used car! That definitely played a huge part in my decision to purchase the car. Refurbished computers that you see on BestBuy.com usually only carry a 90-day warranty. Personally, that in itself throws up red flags for me. These computers usually only suffered some sort of hardware failure (totally normal in the world of technology) and the part(s) is usually replaced, which should mean that the computer should be good as new. My question is: If it is "as good as new," then why only a 90-day warranty? Then again, most of the models that are refurbished are a few months behind the current technology. So, if you are looking for a great deal, then refurbished computers are the way to go. Some of my friends and family have purchased refurbs and most are happy with it.
During my time with Best Buy, I've seen some horrid refurbs. I've had Asus desktops with the heatsink bouncing around inside the computer. I've had Dells which never powered on. I've seen laptops with non-functioning optical drives. All of these are normal problems that affect even new computers out of the box but the fact that they all occured on refurbs and the customers had brought them into my store less than a week of purchasing it just seems a bit more than coincidental. On a brighter side, my sister is using a refurbished Asus desktop she purchased from BBY.com and it's working out fine. It's been a little over a year and I have not had to repair it.
Returns are not listed as refurbished because nothing has been refurbished except for the ownership. Sometimes people just change their minds even though the computer is not defective in any way. The other thing to consider is that refurbished computers are not eligible for Geek Squad Protection (Best Buy's version of a service plan). You might want to consider SquareTrade if you wanted to cover your computer with some sort of warranty, but I think 1 year is the max coverage they offer on refurbished computers.
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I DO NOT work for Best Buy. Whatever I post are just educated guesses or common sense.
