A Bad Scratch And Dent Experience

Since people have asked what "Scratch and Dent" means, I thought I would tell our story.

We have had good luck in previous purchases of both a desktop (XPS Studio) and a laptop (Lattitude E7440) that were certified refurbished.  We just had our first and last experience with a scratch and dent.  We bought an Inspiron 3147.  From the outside, it looked like it had been slid across rough pavement, as there were deep scratches all over the top and bottom, but that we could live with.  Opening it up, everything looked clean.  However, the touchpad was obviously stuck in the depressed location, and thus the touchpad "buttons" didn't work properly.  They keyboard wasn't mounted properly, so pressing any key on the left half made the whole keyboard move far more than the rest of the keyboard (a new Inspiron 3147 at a local store didn't do this), and because of this movement, the keyboard would then make a funny noise when the key was released.  The third issue was a high spot on the underside of the laptop that caused the whole laptop to rock whenever a key along the left or right side of the keyboard was pressed.

We are amazed that this could have made it past even the most basic quality control, because you could tell the touchpad had issues just by looking at it.  Dell took it back, but I didn't think we were signing up to be the quality control.

We are very sorry we wasted our time with a scratch and dent, and now have to wonder if we have just been lucky with the refurbished purchases.