My experience with my broken Dell XPS 8950 didn't turn me off of Dell computers. Despite the large time sink, it was eventually fixed under warranty with no financial cost to me. So I was intrigued when I learned about dellrefurbished.com, operated by Dell Financial Services. (DFS)

I bought my XPS 8950 as a refurbished item from the "Deals" section of dell.com. That section listed nearly-new machines that were returned to Dell for whatever reason (buyer's remorse, etc.) and resold with full warranty. This is different. Just as many automakers have a financing arm to lease cars, this is Dell's financing arm to lease computers to businesses. This way Dell gets to move inventory, and corporations get the tax advantages of leasing. At the end of the lease, those computer are returned to DFS. Because DFS is not in the business of sitting on equipment, they then need to sell those lease-returned computers.

I had vaguely known such operations existed, but I didn't expect a retail web site. I had assumed entities like DFS would make wholesale transfers to dedicated retailers of secondhand machines like PC Liquidations or the many vendors operating under Amazon Renewed, the Amazon umbrella for refurbished goods. But I was wrong and here is a retail site. I guess DFS decided there's enough money on the table to be worth the effort of running a retail site? Whatever the reason, once I learned of the site I kept an eye on it over several weeks. To get a feel of how it operated and the kind of inventory that shows up, then sold off.

Machines for sale are limited to the business-focused subset of Dell's product line. Meaning OptiPlex desktops and Latitude laptops instead of the consumer-focused Inspiron lines, and no gaming PCs with high-power GPUs like my XPS 8950. Some of the engineering-focused Precision machines have CAD-centric Quadro GPUs, which are a step behind gaming GPU power but far better than nothing. And more importantly, Quadro equipped Precision desktops frequently have power supplies sufficient to feed a mid range gaming GPU if I wanted to retrofit one. These all look like fairly capable machines. DFS is not competing at the bottom end of the market: even the most heavily discounted machines will cost more than lowest bidders on Amazon.

Oh yeah, about those discounts. From what I can tell, DFS initially list machines at a premium over market price, looking for people willing to pay more to buy "directly" from Dell. Instead of, say, a no-name Amazon vendor. But as previously mentioned: DFS is not in the business of sitting on equipment. As inventory ages, discounts pile up to move them out. Usually 10%-20% will bring DFS prices in line with market price, but then the discounts keep going. 30%, 40%, even to 50%. (Observing over several weeks, I never saw discount beyond 50%.) The discounts make some machines mighty tempting! Now all I need is an excuse... um... justifiable reason to try one.