I've been offered a very interesting proposition from a mass retailer. I don't want to mention the name but let's just say everyone here knows who they are. Anyway I know the store manager and I'm really good friends with one of the assistant managers. My assit. manager buddy called me today and told me that when people return computers they've bought from them, they don't even attempt to return them to the manufacturers because they are a big box store and its not worth their time. They keep the computers in the back and end up selling them to employees for pennies. He said if I was interested, they would sell them to me for $25 each and the store manager approved it because they literally almost give them away now. I told him I was very interested and he brought me two HP laptops, both in the org. box and they looked BRAND NEW. They had no idea what was wrong with them because they don't test them or know anything about them, they just issue the refund if it is within the normal return period.
I opened both boxes and both laptops still had the plastic on them. It didn't take 30 seconds to figure out both had dead hard drives. The first powered up and the hard drive just clicked very loudly over and over. The other booted to a black screen saying "No boot device found". Simple and cheap fixes compared to the value of the laptops, even if I bought the hard drives and did the reinstalls myself. We talked about it and the assit. manager mentioned that the laptops should still be under warranty since they were new.....
That got me to thinking, so I got on HP's chat support, told them the problem, gave them the serial numbers and sure enough they said they were under warranty and they would replace the drives for free. Sweet!
So here is where I'm at. I'm going to get these both repaired for free and I'm going to have almost nothing in them. But if keep buying these and attempt to use the (very valid) warranty, aren't HP, Dell or the other manufacturers going to start balking and asking why I have so many brand new computers under warranty and in need of repair? I can imagine after a few of these warranty repairs they are going to start getting suspicious and wonder what is going on. I wonder what they will say if I just flat out tell them the truth, that I'm buying these in bulk from XXX store? I'm not going to lie about it and I don't want to "flagged" as some sort of a scammer by the manufacturers.
This is all on the up and up and the store manager is approving the sales to me and the computers are really under warranty, but they are just too big to care about messing with the returns themselves.
Thoughts?
I opened both boxes and both laptops still had the plastic on them. It didn't take 30 seconds to figure out both had dead hard drives. The first powered up and the hard drive just clicked very loudly over and over. The other booted to a black screen saying "No boot device found". Simple and cheap fixes compared to the value of the laptops, even if I bought the hard drives and did the reinstalls myself. We talked about it and the assit. manager mentioned that the laptops should still be under warranty since they were new.....
That got me to thinking, so I got on HP's chat support, told them the problem, gave them the serial numbers and sure enough they said they were under warranty and they would replace the drives for free. Sweet!
So here is where I'm at. I'm going to get these both repaired for free and I'm going to have almost nothing in them. But if keep buying these and attempt to use the (very valid) warranty, aren't HP, Dell or the other manufacturers going to start balking and asking why I have so many brand new computers under warranty and in need of repair? I can imagine after a few of these warranty repairs they are going to start getting suspicious and wonder what is going on. I wonder what they will say if I just flat out tell them the truth, that I'm buying these in bulk from XXX store? I'm not going to lie about it and I don't want to "flagged" as some sort of a scammer by the manufacturers.
This is all on the up and up and the store manager is approving the sales to me and the computers are really under warranty, but they are just too big to care about messing with the returns themselves.
Thoughts?