I have been singing the praises of A4L for years. The units I have gotten from them always have looked like new (or very very close) and operated flawlessly. However, I can no longer say this!
My refurbished Marantz NR-1605 started cycling on and off about a month ago. I bought it 11/18/15 and was busy (or slack) and waited until last week to drive into the belly of the beast that is Atlanta traffic to a repair center (2.5 weeks left of one year Marantz warranty on refurb). I took it to Norman's Electronic repair which is the area Marantz authorized repair center. 2 days later they called and said the part I needed was an HDMI board and they were on back order, so Marantz would replace my unit with another refurbished NR-1605 which I received today!
So only 5 days (3 business days) since I dropped it off and I have a working replacement!
I can't complain about that kind of support.
A4L was kind enough to email a copy of my invoice to the repair center so I didn't have to worry about digging out old paperwork!
Personally, A4L has been wonderful to deal with. Here are some facts and my thoughts:
8 receivers bought over past 7 years, average years ownership of receivers is 3.13 years with this one failure. I do not own all of these, but the ones not in my house, I know to still be functioning well except I do not know if there have been any problems with the Denon AVR-X4000 that I sold to
@speakerman39 after he sold it to someone else.
I have also bought 3 clock radio/ipod docks, and 2 CD/DVD players with no failures. Or a grand total of 13 units with one failure.
I believe I saved a minimum of 25% over street price as compared to buying new (this includes Amazon open box pricing) so if I had a failure for every 4 units, I would break even on the basis of cost alone. However, having a failure is a hassle
There is also the question of what the chance of this HDMI board failing had I bought a new AVR instead.
Electronics have been established to follow a bathtub curve for failure rates, so I do not feel a three year warranty is tremendously more valuable than a one year warranty, IOW if it doesn't fail in the first days of operation, the likelihood of failure is low for the next few years:
Part of my purpose for this thread is that in the future, I will link it when suggesting people buy from A4L so they will have the full information on my (no longer perfect) experience.
Lastly, I want to point out that there is an important distinction between manufacturer refurbished and warranted by the manufacturer vs. items refurbed and warrantied by third parties. The well known companies A4L deals with have their name behind these products and you would presume have well thought out repair procedures to protect their reputation - for the manufacturer, refurb sales are more of a way to cut losses rather than being their real profit center.
The third party operations often consist of a company buying returned stock for a deep discount and trying to minimize repair cost and maximize profit off of these units (Ferengi style)! If they get a bad reputation, all they have to do is change the name of their company.
