QOTW: Do you buy much second-hand tech?

[OilSheikh]

Prices have increased because manufacturers are charging more. I am afraid the golden era of cheap components is over.
Samsung S3 1TB HDD used to cost £30 and have 3 years warranty.
16GB DDR3 RAM could be bought for £50.
Good times...

[peterb]

If buying anything through a computer store then it is second hand already, they buy from the company who made the piece of hardware and put a fee on to cover the losses and earn a little.

It should be 3rd hand if any.

No, because the kit will still carry the mfr warranty, be unused and (should be) in the sealed mfrs packaging. Applying your logic, the goods would be third or fourth hand as they may have passed through a shipping agency and a distributor and maybe a wholesaler before going to the retailer.

[Copperwings]

I tend to buy new as well, for a variety of reasons, most of which have been mentions by others already.

An interesting point about computer fairs though. I think that a lot of us in the tech hobby world would *like* there to be more of a demand for them (who doesn't like a good rummage!). The main problem I see though is that with the expansion of variety of goods available thanks to internet shopping, along with the wealth of information/reviews we now have access to... finding *exactly* what you're after at any particular fair becomes quite difficult. Perhaps we've become a bit spoilt by all this choice and things were just simpler in times gone by.

[pa1nkiller]

I used to buy 360 controller batteries from CEX but they never cleaned them and somehow thought it was acceptable to sell them with the previous owners finger gunk in all the grooves.

CPUs I'll get from eBay as their pricing is ridiculous for brand new from a store.

[=assassin=]

I've never bought a single piece of tech second hand. I've had things like monitors and PC's given to me for free, where I have made use of the components, but I've never actually bought something that has previously been used. I'm always a bit wary of second hand tech, since things like CPU's, graphics cards, or motherboards, may have been overclocked alot and have very little life left in them. It's a bit like a car in that you don't know how the previous driver has driven it, but at least with a car, if you buy from a dealer you can get a short warranty with second hand cars if you had any issues, whereas buying something off ebay and having it fail a couple of weeks later means you're stuck with a brick.

[Saracen]

Not very often, no,

I don't have anything against the idea, provided I trust (*) the seller, but these days, I'm pretty selective about what I buy, and buy very specific items, and don't buy much at all so I would need to be pretty lucky for exactly the right thing to come up, at exactly the right time, from someone I trust.

What it boils down to is I'm pretty risk-averse, and extremely hassle-averse, and buying new minimises both. Even when buying new, though, I'm pretty selective about where I buy, and price is not the top criteria.

(*) The more expensive the item, the more important this is and the less inclined I am to take a punt.

[GoNz0]

I try not to buy 2nd hand tech as I never seem to have a good experience due to me being so fussy about my hardware. I do however sell plenty and get nothing but good feedback, my recent Dell XPS 9550 sale was a good example, the guy who bought it came back and said he had trouble finding anything to indicate it was anything other than brand new and he was amazed it met the description.

I recently bought a 2nd hand Sony A77m2 and 16-50 lens from LCE, it lived for 3 days then intermittently failed to start, after a few more uses it failed to recognise the lens so I tried my £800 lens, it failed to recognise this as well. Turns out it fried the chips in both lenes so I am now waiting to see if LCE come good and repair the lens FOC. I expect they wont!

[016ive]

never do.

[TooNice]

I have done it. Not often overall, but I have done it, I've snatched some pretty decent bargains.

Namely, a guitar amp worth over £500-600 new for £120 delivered off a buying from Ebay. It was cheque only (back when you still had options other than Paypal), and it was not a power user or anything (just 30 odd positive feedback). Probably one of my biggest punt, but I ended up with an amp in pristine condition still with the price tag on it. The seller basically said it was too big and powerful, and as it was past the return period, he just wanted to get rid of it (he also provided the receipt as proof). I don't think he realised how expensive it would be to send it, but it was a serious bargain for me..

My biggest transaction was that of a projector bought from an AVForum user. New, it would be £2000, and the seller wanted £1200 for it. I went to inspect it before buying it and carry it back, but I must say that I was quite nervous entering someone's home with that much cash on me. Still, once again, it was a steal, the projector (lamp) had only a dozen hours on it, and the seller only wanted to sell it because he decided that he wanted to go all out and buy an even higher end model after all.

On the other hand, another time I bought a microphone on Ebay, a well regarded but old and discontinued product and it was a dud. The seller clearly just wanted to clear some stuff, didn't test it, and didn't even know that the battery left in the mic had turned into (probably toxic) powder. Since I don't have any bitter memory I probably got a refund.. If not, it would've been about £15 down the drain.

I must say that those were all quite some time ago, and I do find myself buying new for the past few years..

[llololloy]

Yep, bought quite a number of items from ebay like cpu, gpu, mainboard, ssd and had only a couple of issues.
Had a few from cex, had to return a duff drive and a duff cpu but was no hassle.
Computers are more of a hobby, and funds are tight, so if I can get what I need at a lower price then that's what I do. I rarely need the latest tech.

[Spud1]

I used to buy and sell a lot on here - but these days I always buy new.

I still sell my old kit though - usually to CEX as they always overpay for your items I'd never buy from them as they are a complete rip off to buyers, but it's a great place to sell to! Failing that i've used ebay for getting rid of things that CEX don't want, which as long as you don't accept returns (and pay for insured shipping) is generally fine. Again I don't tend to buy second hand tech from ebay though, too much hassle.

[raven1001]

OCUK members market, AVforums and ebay are my haunts for used tech.

[Spreadie]

Yes, all the time.

[DemonHighwayman]

My last GPU was second hand (AMD 5870) which I bought from a community forum to replace my GTX 280 which had given up, It was a good solid card and I still keep it around as a backup.
Apart from that, if i want to do a special project I browse ebay for cheap stuff, for example for the last 6 months or so i've been looking for a retro 40's/50's) looking radio or nintendo nes to build a small PC into.

[Phage]

That sounds like a great idea. I always fancied something like these

http://www.slipperyskip.com/page23.html

[MDK]

Never bought second-hand.
When I see how much trouble 1st-hand stuff can be, I don't wish to get 2nd-hand, due to warranty problems.