Back Market is an online marketplace dedicated to the reselling of refurbished devices, connecting buyers with trusted third-party sellers. It works a bit like eBay, where the site shows the products but you buy from the refurbisher directly.
What is the difference between refurbished and second hand?
When you buy a product that is second hand, it comes from the seller in the condition you saw it in, it may have had rudimentary cleaning but the product has not been checked to see if it is working properly.
A refurbished product is sent to a clean room and is dismantled and checked thoroughly for any damage. If it needs replacement parts such as a new battery or screen, these are replaced before being reassembled and packaged ready for the new customer to buy, it is as-new.
What is Back Market?
Back Market is an online marketplace for high end refurbished products aiming to reduce the number of devices ending up in landfill and work against planned obsolescence.
They offer their services to 6 million customers over 16 countries with head office being in France.
Why use Back Market?
I’ve seen a lot of customers with broken Macs recently, where the cost of replacing a part for their older Mac costs more than to buy a newer refurbished Mac. The advantage of a newer machine is not only going to be faster, but it will run the newer operating system.
When Apple releases Ventura for instance, it will only be available to 2017 and newer iMacs, which means older iMacs won’t be able to be upgraded, so picking up a cheap 2017 iMac will enable you to keep up to date without paying out for a new one.
So for £420 you can pick up a refurbished 21″ 2017 iMac or for £720 you can pick one up with the faster SSD.
Or if you are an iPhone user, you can pick up an iPhone 8 for about £120 that will run the latest iOS 16.
