Hi all, been looking into getting a refurbished PC, and came across this. The website says it's "Wholly owned" by Dell Inc, but I don't see why they'd have a separate site running parallel to the refurbished outlet on Dell.com.

Any info would be greatly appreciated!

Greetings,

I wanted to provide some closure on a post I made 6 days ago wherein I was seeking information with my non-functional (and seemingly non-existent) webcam.

To keep the background info short, I found a good deal on a Precision 7550 that had everything I wanted at a price I was willing to pay. The dellrefurbished.com website has a few yellow flags but a few minutes searching around didn't reveal it to be a scam. Although from what I can tell, the only actual thing they share with Dell is the name. Completely different outfit/company otherwise. The site said they warranty all items they sell for 100 days, and provide an extended 360-day warranty on purchase. I normally never buy extended warranties (and could rant about why) but this was going to be my main computer and I didn't mind getting a little extra protection given the decent price.

When I got the laptop, it checked out just fine, physically. It was listed as "Grade A" which means fully functional with minor scratches and blemishes here and there but nothing too noticeable. I would say the laptop fits that description. It looks no worse than I would expect any 3-year-old laptop to look. And in fact, the screen, keyboard, and palmrest look basically brand-new. The only issues I could find were:

• The battery health is reported at 78%. That's fair, in my experience, Dell batteries only usually live about 3-4 years from the factory anyway and I always end up replacing them with higher-quality aftermarket ones that outlast the rest of the machine.

• The webcam didn't work. As in, not even in on the USB bus in the system diagnostics or in the OS.

A webcam is not optional for me, I use it all the time for work-related meetings. I'm a pretty technical user, so I was able to diagnose the issue as probably having a bad webcam module or cabling. Unfortunately nobody with another 7550 saw my thread above to answer my specific questions, although I am appreciative that a few people took the time to respond anyway.

There are only two ways to get in touch with Dell Refurbished technical support: Phone and email. I tried calling them first and their automated phone system just hung up on me after the greeting. Three times in a row. Then I tried emailing them and 2 days passed with no response. (Not even a, "we acknowledge that you emailed us" email.) As a last-ditch effort, I tried calling them again and this time got a hold of someone. When I gave them the order number, they said my found my email in the support queue and that they would give me a response by email by the end of the following business day.

I did get their response, but it was highly disappointing: instead of giving me an address to send it in for repair, or just sending me a new webcam module, they instead said they could not repair the laptop and offered a $30 refund. You read that right, $30. For a fairly high-spec laptop that they sold as "fully functional" days after purchase. That doesn't even cover the cost of the extended warranty I (foolishly) bought.

So I opened up the display (easier than I thought it would be), jotted down the part number, bought the damn webcam module myself from an eBay seller, swapped it out for the new one, and the new one works perfectly. Thank goodness it was not an expensive part, and did not require replacing the entire display as I originally assumed. The only gamble I took was that the part number of the module that I removed from the laptop was not identical to any being sold on eBay, so I picked the closest one that looked the same.

For those who might find this thread in the future, the model number on the broken webcam was CN-00XMGG-8LG00-084-C1R0-A02 and the replacement was CN-00XMGG-8LG00-045-A1KM-A02. I suspect most of the 00XMGG cameras will substitute for each other but cannot positively confirm this.

Anyway, the new camera shows up on the USB bus now, and there is an icon for it in the diagnostics screen. I verified that it (along with the internal mic) works in the OS now. So almost a happy ending. I'm going to email Dell Refurbished again and ask for a refund for the price of the camera plus what I paid for the extended warranty, since it clearly isn't worth anything. We'll see what they say.

This is (probably) the last time I buy from dellrefurbished.com.

Update: I heard back from them and their new offer is a $20 refund. All I can say is, "LOL." (Their first insufficient offer was $30. At this point, I am starting to believe their customer support is handled by an exceptionally bad AI.)