Woot staff, thanks for your efforts in providing the warranty and $40 off. Was curious, are there any phones remaining in stock that could be sold under a new label/title such as ‘new open box’ and with/without warranty for around $210? If so, I would get another one.
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I was sort of thinking this same thing. Keep your eyes opened. They may very well pop up in another sale with the correct information.
So I ordered two to replace mine and my wife’s Pixel XL (32GB, 2+ years old). The thought was that we will get at least one more OS update and the expanded storage and fresh battery would give us another 2-years? That’s the part that had me thinking serious about this deal - that these phones were “new.”
I got two phones, they are from woot according to packing label.
The two phones had original seals broken with a new seal applied.
Inside, I also found the notes about how the manufacturer’s warranty is not valid for these phones - woot definitely screwed up on the warranty claim.
The wrap around the phone looked pretty new to me. No suspicious sign of someone who opened it and tried to put it together - check.
I inspected the phones for sign of use - or “refurbish.” I checked them out under the microscope. The typical place where a sign of use would be evident - headphone connector, USB-C connector both looked factory fresh - absolutely no sign of wear on either phones. Also there is no scratch of any kind around the perimeter of the phone where you would expect to see them if they had any usage.
Now comes the battery check - I opened one of the two phones and installed accubattery. The charge was 1% when I turned the phone on - probably sign of being stored for a long time. First full charge, accubattery says 85% of the design capacity - uh oh, that means that the battery is either not new or have been kept at 1% for too long (Lithium battery highest rate of degradation at no charge or full charge). So I discharged the battery all the way down with a constant youtube content. Second full charge session - accubattery now says 97% - much better. So I’m going to check one more day to see what it will say. I’m new to accubattery, and it looks like it will take few charge/discharge cycles for it to get meaningful statistics. Also the first charge session may be inaccurate because of the very long time of discharge on this battery.
I’m still keeping the option of 30-day return open in my mind, but based on observations so far, it looks like woot’s claim that these are new phones but opened to insert the warranty note is credible. How they dropped the ball on the original warranty claim is probably based on failure of trust.
I purchased the phone with my American Express Blue Cash Preferred card which offers one year warranty on this because they only match the original warranty (would be up to two if the original warranty was longer than 1 year). I also have the Costco’s Visa card from Citi who would have offered two additional years, but my past experience with the extended warranty claim with the two is that sometimes Citi asks for the impossible - “give me all the paperwork you may no longer have,” including original warranty paperwork from the manufacturer - you’d be surprised how many rely on their own website page that no longer exists. And also for every claim, you have to provide a quote of repair - for some items you may not be able to get anybody to repair it and fail on getting any quotes. For American Express, they issued the refund either the same day or the next day with my past claims. I’ve never seen anything like that. So I opted for shorter but much less troublesome choice.
Good luck everyone, it looks like if the battery tests continue to go well, I’ll be keeping the phone.
By the way, I saw the original charge from woot come through, but did not see the $40/phone rebate on my credit card website. I’ll post on my progress.
- Peter
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Alright, a quick update - Accubattery after “4 sessions with 349% charged for 11,805mAh total” says the battery estimated capacity is 3382mAh vs design capacity (original manufacturer capacity) of 3450mAh. So that’s 98% of the OEM capacity. I say that’s good enough. I’ll run a similar routine with the other phone. It seems very likely that these were indeed “new” but opened.
I also saw the $80 refund come across my American Express account. I’m pretty much set.
The only thing that’s nagging is the “1-year woot warranty” - no details other than one email to me. So what is covered and what is not? I assume that the terms are same as Google, but woot.com will step in? I’m betting that a company owned by Amazon would not give me static when I end up having a valid warranty claim. I’m also not sure if AMEX will support extending woot.com warranty. I’ll just have to take my chances.
By the way, I had the infamous microphone hardware issue on my original Pixel XL. I took the phone to my local uBreakiFix (authorized by Google to fix their phones), and they ran through tests and provided a new motherboard with $0 charge, despite being out of warranty. The word on the street is that the later Pixel phones do not suffer from that issue. If this phone’s warranty expired on Jan 2019, then it was maybe manufactured close to Jan 2018. I’m hoping that it doesn’t have that issue - fingers crossed.
- Peter
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Finally received my phone because I sent it to my parents and met up with them in Europe to get it (My family and I live in Central Africa). It was new, all new accessories. Battery life isn’t the best on pie, but every phone I’ve had with a 2k display has had battery life like this, about 4 hours screen time. But everything functions as new. Just visited the Eiffel tower and got some spectacular shots. Camera is better than my wife’s 6s. GPS has worked great while using tons of Ubers. Charges very quickly. Plays games fine. Really was a steal at this price point. Way better phone than my Moto G6 around the same price.
Update: Had this for a few months now and the vibration motor went out. Been more of an annoyance but wish I was near a repair facility.
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