I got my p-6831fx on ebay. Actually two of them. The first one from 2ndturn, it arrived but NOT in the condition stated in the auction. I don't think anyone really bothered to look at it aside from how shiney it was. The HD compartment wasn't snapped in properly and the battery came halp attached. It would only give a few loud beeps with nothing on the screen at all when I hit the power button. I wasn't a happy camper. They will only operate via email so getting it returned and my money back has been a long process. In the meantime they of course have my money. It took my 3 days to get an RMA and they got it last thursday. Yesterday I got an email that it will take them up to a week to inspect the unit and tell me if they will give
me my money back or not.
This will be a MONTH LONG PROCESS in total. That is from the time I bought a laptop till the time I get the money back in my paypal account.
Their emails are mushy saying, at their option, they may give my money back, or repair it and send it back or give me another unit. I finally dug long enough and got a phone number and talked to a live person that suggested they would give me my money back if it arrived there in the condition I said it was in. I explained I bought the unit to have it, I had my old unit sold and needed another NOW. I suggested I would buy another for the same price and PP the money to them or I would have to buy another from someone else. I got only canned responses until I got ahold of someone on the phone. Then their responses were still mushy saying I should tell the RMA dept that I wanted a full refund and I should get my money back. I had just gotten a RMA attachment to an email to me with a UPS shipping tag paying only for ground shipping. It takes another week for it to get to them.
I will never deal with those folks again. You might notice there are several "sellers", different names but similar page layouts that all ship from the same places in TX and Ca, and have similar names. Hmmmmm....I suggested to the phone rep, who is located in Minneapolis area, Best Buy's home, that the company is owned by Best Buy. He didn't disagree with me.
If you are willing to take the chance that you will get what they say you will get, and don't mind your money being tied up if not, go with them.
A bunch of these units were apparently sold to other resellers like the one I did eventually buy from. Their P-6831fx's go a little higher usually but not by much.
I got a virtually perfect unit with only major scratches on the battery. When they say you don't get an OS, indeed Vista is not on the hard drive. BUT, the gateway white OS DVD was with both machines and I had another with my existing MX8711. I installed from that and the SN for home premium magically appeared. I understand the Vista SN is enbedded in the bios, like my MX8711, so you DO get an OS.
I'd say buying from one of the smaller resellers, where you can easily get ahold of them might be a good bet. That's what I did. I could afford to put a t9300 in it and have a High res LCD on order too. Mine has a better processor and will have the same screen as the P-172x fx being sold by Gateway for 2K + tax, delivery etc for $500 less plus work.
It's all Best Buy merchandise! They undoubtedly got a ton back, since they sold a load of 'em. Rather than reducing the perceived value of the product and dealing with the repair issues on a store level, selling them off via ebay is probably a good deal for them now that they are marketing the P-6860 in the stores at a higher price with only minimal changes hardware wise.
If a laptop, like most consumer electronics, works on day one, it will work, aside from keyboards, hard drives and the like 2 years from now. That's been my experience and that's how long I plan on keeping this one.
Larry
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