i noticed today on cingular.com you can get a refurbished 8700c for $50 if you sign a 2 year contract. just giving people a heads up, also i have purchased a refurbished and i have had it for about a year now. it works great. when i got my 8700c refurbished it was $150. maybe they trying to sell the old 8700's to make room for the 8300!!
I got a similar deal the other week. I got my refurb 8700c for $69 online. Its great, not a scratch on it and I get a free upgrade to a new BB in 21mths.
Just a forewarning, I purchased a refurbished 8700c about 6 months ago (give or take a month). The device looked perfect when I received it. Had it been in a normal Blackberry box, I'd have had no idea it was refurbished.
After about 15 minutes of playing around with it, the OS went flaky. Random shutdowns, and finally it rebooted with a triangle-and-exclamation on the screen, not allowing me to get to the home screen. After a day of troubleshooting I caved and called Cingular Tech Support. They gave me three options- Return the phone via UPS, take it into a Cingular store for service, or try and exchange it at a store.
The first two Cingular Retail Stores(not Reseller--- has to be a Retail store) told me they did not have the software to fix it... OK, and none of them had any idea as to what the problem could have been. I finally grabbed my packing slip and the 8700c and went to a third Retail store. The guy looked at it, switched out the 3G SIM for the legacy version, and finally walked away with my packing slip and phone. He came back 5 minutes later with a brand new 8700c-- not refurbished, off the shelf brand new. It was programmed and working properly, and he gave me an additional battery and charger. Never had any other issues with the 8700c. Turns out I just got a dead OS.
That was one of the most dishonest things I had done, but I asked the guy before I left if it mattered that I bought a refurbished... To which he laughed and said either way he would be reimbursed by RIM for the new phone he gave me.
Cool stuff eh? Just make sure to keep that packing slip, and keep quiet the fact that you bought a refurbished model (if a problem arises), and you'll have no issues.
cingular 8700c deals online
