As the ZyXel VMG1312-B10A appears to be very much respected by many forum members and with view to replacing my Huawei HG612/Netgear DGND3700v2 combination with a one box solution, I decided to buy a "new" VMG1312-B10A at the going rate rather than mess about with possibly ISP branded units having established that members S/H units were very hard to come by.
I chose what looked like a reputable supplier on Amazon (won't mention their name) and ordered the item which was fulfilled by Amazon & submitted my order paying what I considered to be the going rate for a brand new unit.
On delivery, I became suspicious very quickly that the router was not a brand new unit:
There was a "new" bar code label on the box (why would the manuf. have to say it's new ?)
Within the box, the router was not wrapped and had lots of smudges & finger prints apparent.
The PSU was loose in the box, no packing.
There was a rattle as if the PCB was not fully secured.
When powered up, the default admin. ID & PW (admin/1234) for GUI access would not work, had to perform a "factory reset" to gain access. (now had access at all levels)
The firmware was a quite old revision [V1.00(AAJZ.6), current V1.00(AAJZ.12)]
(appreciate that FW can be out of date if items are "on the shelf" for a long period, however this revision seems very old)
As fulfilled by Amazon, there was absolutely no issue with returning the item which I decided to do, did initially request access to the supplier at a personal level to express my concerns but Amazon would not permit this hence the decision to return the unit for a full refund.
Am I being paranoid or was I justified in returning the item ?
Don't think that I would ever have been completely happy with the router even if it had performed fully to expectation, would always have had the doubt that a "real new" item may have performed better ?