If you thought that coming to the forum and start loling on mikrotik, will get you anything?
If you represent a school, some dignity and good manners, applies to you as well, as a minimum.
Sure, and nothing will change that.
Still, let's compare the actual:
with a completely hypothetical:
Dear customer,
we checked thoroughly the board, unfortunately the proto-fragwolt of the main CPU is malfunctioning, thus the CPU needs to be replaced, together with the meta-trigwis of the memory bus.
Such an extensive repair, which can be estimated around 700 Euro + VAT, won't however guarantee that other components need replacement, and this may further increase the cost of the repair.
Replacing the whole board, with a similar cost, it isn't possible at the moment as such boards are not available and we believe they won't become available for at least 4 months.
As such, considering also that on repairs we offer only a limited three months warranty, the repair is not economically convenient.
Considering this, and as a one time exception, we can offer you a replacement unit, new, and with new one year standard warranty, with a 20% discount on retail price.
Sometimes manufacturers keep warranty returned devices with just minor defects like defect power supply. Repair them when it is economical and in cases like this, such a device can be offered as a replacement for just a very low fee or no fee at all - just shipping costs.
Yes, it's very common, and usually resold as "refurbished" devices.
Quite often price of refurbished devices is not a symbolical one. They are indeed cheaper than new, but price can be as high as half of price for new device. I'm pretty sure prices of refurbished devices can't be really low due to cost of labour[*]. Which includes a service technician zo fo full diagnostics - regardless of apparent damage because refurbished devices usually come with (limited) warranty, so whoever refurbishes those devices and sells them can't really afford not to be 100% sure that device works fine when being delivered.
[*] if refurbishment business is not profitable by itself (so covering costs of servicing broken devices), then costs have to be covered by some other department ... which ever sees some other profits from doing it, perhaps marketing? And IMO refurbishing can only be profitable business if there's a steady incoming stream of suitable used devices. Ideally those are working (e.g. result of some swap-in deals) or only with minor damages. And they should be current models or recently discontinued models.
wowdude…I agree -- dignity is important. Thatss exactly why refuse discount as a 'solution' for a faulty $750 router that an authorized service center claims cannot be repaird. If standing up for taxpayer money and demanding professional support for a flagship CCR model is 'loling' to you:), then we clearly have different definitions of professional standard;'s. 'Still waitin for a technical solution, not a lecture on manners.
But did the school overpay?
I was dead set on this specific model.. it was backorderd back then, and the Euro ex/rate was high.
Precize that was arount ~940 EUR