Apple's Online Refurb Store Outage Reaches Third Day [Updated]

The UK store was working yesterday, and still appears to be working today - for example, see http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals/mac.

Edit: In fact, if I try the US store and the .au stores included in the MacRumors links, I'm seeing content as well. Perhaps only some people are being affected? Or are certain IP addresses getting blocked?

Image (http://beent.je/us_refurbs.png)

£399 for a refurbished iPad 2?! That's $615 US, I knew the pricing was much higher for Apple products overseas but c'mon, that's ridiculous!

Yeah, it's working but it's been changed since last I saw:

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals

The £399 includes a 20% VAT (effectively sales tax). Welcome to Europe, don't go to Hungary VAT is 27% there.

Then you add the cost of transportation ($8+ per gallon of gas), "free" healthcare, 6 weeks of vacation benefits, etc. I'd say £399 is actually "cheaper" than in the US.

Free to recipient != free of cost

I grew up in London when my father worked for Bear Stearns in Investment Banking. I miss it something bad.

...and you're spot on about everything else, concepts yet to be understood in the U.S. As a diabetic in perfect health since 12 - now 35 - I still pay $1k/mo to Blue Cross Blue Shield Excellus and still have to fight them for included coverage as they want to wear you down. I'd take the taxes that go to healthcare, education and other aspects that actually IMPROVE our way of live and make us a better country than this left/right rhetoric that is tearing us apart. God, I want to move back! Adopt me! lol

£399 for a refurbished iPad 2?! That's $615 US, I knew the pricing was much higher for Apple products overseas but c'mon, that's ridiculous!

The £399 includes a 20% VAT (effectively sales tax). Welcome to Europe, don't go to Hungary VAT is 27% there.

Then you add the cost of transportation ($8+ per gallon of gas), "free" healthcare, 6 weeks of vacation benefits, etc. I'd say £399 is actually "cheaper" than in the US.

Free to recipient != free of cost

I'm in the U.S. and this is what I get:

IF the store is empty it isn't that big of a mystery.

Refurbs are from customer returns. Either no one is returning stuff cause they like what they got or the rate of returns is slower than the rate folks were buying up the refurbs. Basic retail math.

Perhaps, but in all the years I have been looking at the refurb store, I have never seen it out of EVERYTHING at once. That includes Airports, Macs, AppleTVs. It seems unlikely that everything would suddenly be out when that has never happened before. More likely, there is some sort of technical error. Right now, I see nothing in the store, but when I was at an Apple store last night (Burlington, Canada), all of the regular stuff was there. So it is either a location based problem or an intermittent problem or a cookie problem.

If I click the link, shows up as "Out of Stock" for me.

Weird, I clicked the same link and it shows "In Stock" - $759.00

Edit: running Safari on MBA