Every once in a while, some of you ask "what does 'refurbished' mean? What is the difference between ‘used’ and ‘refurbished’?"

It's a fair question. So, we've decided to lay down the meaning of "refurbished" and share some of the processes and steps we take to ensure our products are as good as new. We want you, our valued customer, to have visibility into our refurbishing process.

Let's pull back the Tech Curtain of TechMikeNY!

Refurbished – A Definition 

Refurbished is defined as any product that is not factory-new, but instead has been used and then tested to verify it will function properly in a new working environment. The key takeaway is the verification of the machine or part's operability.

WHY IS BUYING REFURBISHED SUCH A GOOD IDEA ANYWAY? That's a great question. And we've answered it in one of our first blog posts, "Why Should You Buy Refurbished Technology?" (SPOILER: You get much more value per dollar spent, and you can help make a difference by reducing electronic waste.)

Contrary to popular belief, there is no legal threshold or quality metric for what constitutes something as officially "refurbished." As such, the quality and reliability of a refurbished product depend almost entirely on the standards of the refurbisher. That's where TechMikeNY's proprietary checklist comes into play. We pride ourselves on having industry-leading (low) return rates on most of our parts; return rates on our drives are even lower than those of new drives from OEMs. This is because we’ve spent years perfecting the metrics and thresholds we use to pass/fail drives when testing them. For example, a ‘used’ drive may merely be functional; a TechMikeNY-refurbished drive is much more – it is as good as new. Because of this, we offer a standard one-year warranty on all our products for free.

DON'T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT! As much as we love sharing our standards and our quality benchmarks, sometimes it's best to let your customers do the talking. As of the date of this writing, our Google Customer Reviews page has a 5 of 5 Stars Rating. In fact, the TechMikeNY brand has such a strong following that we've caught other sellers on different sales channels trying to pass off their servers at TechMikeNY refurbished! Really!

A High-Level Summary of Our Quality Checklist

While we can't go into so much detail as to reveal our Trade Secrets, here is a bird's eye view of a server and the steps taken on each part.

*You can read more about our Hard Drive quality metrics in our blog post, "TechMike's Quality Check: What Are the Metrics We Use for Our Refurbished Hard Drives?" 

DON'T FORGET ABOUT OUR 1-YEAR WARRANTY! On all parts and servers as well as our certifications!

Do you have more questions on our quality checklist? Fire away and shoot us an email at [email protected]. We’ll happily answer!