There’s no conspiracy going on here.
Yes, Apple refurbished. Most manufacturers do not do the work themselves. They farm it out to 3rd parties to do the work to their specifications. No different here but these didn’t pass the bar for sale in the Apple store. They’re just a smidgen below that. See the post above.
The forum thread is not linking to the other sale because, like many things, our system sucks in handling URLs. The other sale ended on 2/21. This sale was created with the same title so our system added a “-1” to the URL. Unfortunately, our system ignores that added bit and just goes to the most recent sale. Drives me batty but not much I can do about it. It’s on a long list of things to be fixed.
Looking in our admin, the sales refer to the correct threads but aren’t linking that way.
Original thread: 1609757 (You can see this number in the url)
Warehouse Cleanout (this): 1626489 or here
The thread was created but linking went wonky.
And sorry, but we decide the warranty length, not you.