Thursday, May 06, 2010

Refurb or not to refurb

I got an email from Gamestop today in regards to some previously-owned deals. I'm usually not too worried about a game being previously owned when I purchase them from a Gamestop or a Blockbuster because I can see the disks to make sure they aren't scratched or whatever. Plus, they usually have a guarantee or return period for anything that doesn't work properly.

It's a little different for me when I look at something as big as a PS3 refurb for $250. For one, the price of a new PS3 Slim 120GB is like $299. And two, these refurbs are guaranteed to work but I can't seem to find if you can buy a service agreement with them because there is no way I'm spending that kind of money on a refurb just to have it crap out on me without having a service agreement and then I have a very expensive but pretty brick!

I had an 80GB and the CD drive crapped out on me after two years and right before, like two weeks before, my service agreement at Best Buy expired. Good timing but sucked because the new PS3 Slims won't play my PS2 games. I get it but I don't get it. I Googled a bunch about the drive problem and a lot of people did the self-fix of installing a new CD drive themselves. It seemed simple enough for less than $100 but I started thinking, "Why the hell did I buy the $200+ service plan if I'm not going to use it?" Everything else about the PS3 80GB was in working order as far as I could tell. I just couldn't play games or movies from the CD drive which is like 99% of what I did. Anyway, longer story short, I ended up getting a replacement because they said the drive was an non-fixable item and an exchange was authorized. The 80GB was like $399. I tried to get them to give me the comparable price exchange of the 250GB PS3 Slim which was $399 but they said it would only exchange the 1st newer model which was the 120GB. I told them the price difference bothered me because I paid $399 and now you are giving me a machine (albeit newer but less functional) for $299. I don't get the actual logic because that's not technically apples for apples in my eyes. There were some other issues I had to work out but I won't go into detail because I've already gone off track of the reason of the post -- if there was a reason.

I still have a PS2 but I really liked being able to play PS2 and PS3 games on one machine. It was less clutter and less A/V input jacks to mess with. It was also nice to get to replay a lot of my PS2 games because I had to play and beat them all over again to get them to save on the PS3 hard drive versus a PS2 memory card. Now, I do know you can transfer this information and I even bought a small, cheaply priced gadget that supposedly do it for me but I never got around to taking the time to do so. Funny thing is that gadget is still in it's package since it's arrival. Anyway, so now I have to play on the PS2 and the PS3 and some PS2 games I have to replay because I can't remember where all my memory cards are. See, too much shit to keep up with.

So, I ponder: buy another PS3 for in-house multi-player games with my kids and neighborhood kids AND a bedroom Blu-ray player or just deal with the one I have because it's not like I play network games with the kids all that often anyhow. I can't decide.

All I do know is that I have $55 of Best Buy Reward certificates that I can apply towards any purchase. They are like cash burning a hole in my pocket. I mean I've spent money to earn those rewards so I should at least get something back out of it, right? A PS3? Maybe but more than likely not. An iPod Touch? Maybe, the wife is against it but my Zune 30GB battery just went defective on me - it'll play with the power cord but it won't once it's unplugged. A Zune HD? Maybe, but only 32GB is a negative for me. An iPod 160GB Classic? Maybe, it's more beneficial to me for the size capacity and I really don't need all those apps for the Touch.

I'm so confused and the hole in my pocket is getting BIGGER!


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