How to tell if refurb/new?

I was wondering how i can tell whether the system im going to pick up is a refurb/used system.. im thinking of purchasing an acer from a smaller store and is kinda concern they might try to sell me a refurb.. i was wondering if theres anyway of telling this apart.. box? serial numbers? anything?

 

Well, if it's refurbished, they have to list that on the paperwork or have it labelled somewhere on the unit that it's refurbished. I believe it's a law the requires them to do this, so they don't sell refurbed items as brands new.

Also, another good way of telling if this might have been an opened box, is to check the tape seal of the box on both the top & underside. Back when I used to service/configure units, the little trick to avoid users from seeing that the boxes have ben opened was to cut and re-tape from the bottom. We didn't do this to trick the customer since they asked for additional hardware to be added. It just looks cleaner than having the top re-taped. So check the tape to see if it's a re-tape job as brand new units should never be a re-tape.

-Vb-

 

All refurb Acer unit have the serial number label removed and replaced with a paper label starting with a "R" in the begiining of the serial number.