I've bought a few including a 32" TV recently for my DD. Never had any problems... none of the items looked used.. they all looked new and all came with some sort of warranty.

I have my Vizio Vtab 1008 tablet that is a refurbished, no problem with it.
With that price not a big risk. There's a warranty on it.

I've bought refurbished computers, and never had a problem. Someone explained to me that "refurbished" doesn't mean much. When something is returned, it's sent back to the manufacturer. "Refurbished" may just mean that they checked it out to see if it was o.k., cleaned it up if nothing was wrong, and sent it back out. I got a refurbished desktop that had a few scratches on it from rough handling, but it was fine and lasted me many years, until it was struck by lightning.

Often a "refurbished" can be better than "new" in some ways, since often the refurbs are tested to see if they're working properly while new items are normally only spot tested at best. I've bought a lot of refurb items over the years. Most couldn't be distinguished from new. I've had far more problems with new items than refurbs percentage-wise.

With reputable operations, an item returned, unused and unopened cannot be sold as new. Generally mail-order places are watched more closely on this than are retail operations. Go to the "W" place and return something and it goes back onto the shelf and re-sold as "new".

well! Thank you all!

I bought a refurbished Brother Project Runway electronic sewing machine a couple of years ago. Love it!