A refurbished iPhone is a prime example of the savings people are making instead of buying brand new, full price, from the store products. A refurbished iPhone could save you up to $100 (£60) on the retail price, and what is the difference between this iPhone and a brand spanking new one from the apple store? The answer is absolutely nothing – ok you might not get the fancy black box but is it really worth the extra money.
So What Does Refurbished Actually Mean?
As with many products, especially expensive electrical goods, customer’s tend to return these goods for the smallest of faults. The company then fixes this small problem but can no longer sell it as brand new, for example an iPhone with a cracked screen that has been replaced would sell as a refurbished iPhone; so you get a phone that is exactly the same as a new iPhone but it costs you less.
Things to Consider When Buying a Refurbished iPhone
If you can get a warranty with your refurbished iPhone then get one, even if its only for 6 months. The highly recommended sellers of these refurbished items will stand behind their product and give you something to fall back on should something go wrong in the future, your iPhone isn’t any more likely to have problems than a brand new iPhone but its good just to be covered – don’t try and save a bit of money at the time as warranties are valuable things to have.
So, where to buy used phones? You can buy refurbished iPhones from a lot of places, this could be a shop on your high street or from the manufacturer itself. Be careful when buying from individuals, you might not get what you expected as a lot of internet scammers tend to list popular apple products that they tried to fix as refurbished, this is not the case.
Lastly it is a good idea to check the age of the iPhone you are buying. Although with the iPhone it won’t really matter, battery problems tend to occur much more often in older products than new ones.