I just saved over $1,400 buying refurbished. If you want to know how I did it and how you could too, read on.
It has been well over a year that I left corporate America for a long deserved break and I have to admit I miss some aspects of the job. Surprisingly what I miss the most is the kick ass laptop I was provided.
Our company had just gone through a laptop refresh and we had the latest of the latest. For those in the know when I opened task manager it showed 8 threads each with its own little graph and whatever I was running in memory didn’t get close to the 16GB available. Oohh and that the lacking sound of that solid state hard drive. I know, I’m totally geeking out right now.
Anyways, when I quit my job I had to send back my laptop and revert back to my not so awesome 2009 HP pavilion.
Why not ask if you could buy the laptop when you left, you may ask? This is where insiders know the answer but those outside of the industry may not. The company I worked for (and most other companies) don’t own the laptops; they are all leased.
This is where you can start saving money. Like any leased car, after the lease is up they end up on the market. For the DELL I had at my last employer it meant, it eventually ended up at DellRefurbished.com. This “branch” of DELL takes in ALL those returned laptops, fixes and cleans them up for the refurbish market.
Yes, like some corporate cars, some laptops get treated horribly. Mine went though 
the airport every week and was dropped left and right when trying to reach for the hard to find airport outlets. Unlike mine, most laptops end up on some desk as the Desktop computer no longer seems to exists. These laptops, that sat on a desk and never left it until the lease was up, are in tiptop shape. Since these generally came with wireless keyboards and mouse they didn’t even get touched that much (other than the power button).
So these nice ones end up back on the market and this is where you can save a bundle. Before I tell you how much I spent last week let’s first look at the corporate laptop I missed so much.
It was a DELL Latitude i7 Quad Core, 16GB memory and a 256Gb SSD (solid state) hard drive.
Current price for a configuration like that would be a DELL E6540 (plus docking station) at $1,801 and that is with a discount offered by DELL of $723. Non-discounted price (for what it is worth): $2,525.
No one in their right mind would pay that kind of money for a laptop would they? I’m with you. Even the discounted price of $1,801.00 sounds ridiculous for a laptop.
Well, what if I told you I bought an almost identical configuration for only $279. That’s right; I bought a DELL Latitude E6520 with i7 quad core processor, 4GB memory without a docking station.
I just picked up a docking station from EBay at $13 and ordered a memory upgrade to 16GB for $79 at Amazon.
When all is said and done I will have paid $371.00 for a refurbished laptop that will cost you almost 5 times that when buying new. It even comes with a warranty.
How did I do it? Well, a couple of things. I didn’t JUST buy refurbished (if you go to dellrefubished.com you will find the laptop I just bought for $546).
The one I bought it was priced at $519 (free shipping and $13.23 tax). There are more savings to be made if you look. Besides just buying refurbished I am also a frequent visitor of deals2buy.com which where I found a 50% off deal for dellrefurbished.com. So my final price came to $272.23.
Like I said, I also purchased a memory upgrade and docking station to match my old configuration so that brings the total closer to $371.
I subsequently also made use of Microsoft’s free Windows 10 upgrade offer. It took some effort but I upgraded my Windows 7 Pro (32 bit) to Windows 10 (32 bit) and subsequently was able to upgrade that to Windows 10 64 bit.
I pretty much now own what I missed most after leaving my corporate job. I’m pretty pleased.
If you’re in the market for a new Laptop it may very well be that Best Buy has what you need for only a few hundred dollars (or less).
If you’re looking for some extra oomph and great savings, consider buying refurbished. There are lots of refurbish vendors out there, I happened to go with DELL.
If you want to get even better deals go for a double whammy and try to find discounts on those refurbished machines. For these types of deals you can look at sites like deals2buy.com
disclaimer: I’m in the amazon affiliate program and get commission based on items you purchase when linking through millionin10.
Other then being a customer, I have NO affiliation with deals2buy.com and dellrefurbished.com
Good luck reaching your financial goals.
My only problem is every time I’ve gotten a ‘refurbished’ product, it dies. The warranty if there is one are never for a year. Phones & PC’s have by far been the worst. They say the refurbished items go through harsher testing, but then why on earth did I go through 4 refurbished phones in one year?
As for a PC, my friends were sold a new one, but when it bombed out they were told it was a refurbished one with no warranty. I’m not saying don’t buy refurbished. Just be cautious.
Love the article & keep up the good work!
Yes definitely read the fine print on warranty. When I change out my memory next week I probably loose what warranty I have. That said I’ve never had many issues with products (electronics) I buy. My philosify is that if it works after 6 months it will work for the next 6 years. I might get proven wrong on my refurb.