Used, new, or scratch and dent: which should you buy?

The line that matters is between scratch-and-dent and used. A scratch-and-dent appliance has never done a load of laundry; its damage happened in a warehouse. A used appliance has a history. Both can be excellent buys and they're priced differently for good reason.

• You need a specific finish, size, or feature to match an existing kitchen, and the second-hand market can't reliably produce it.
• It's a dishwasher. We don't sell used ones for sanitary reasons, and the category has the shortest life of the majors anyway.
• It's going into a rental you won't be able to service easily, and a manufacturer warranty is worth more to you than the money saved.
• You're doing a full renovation where the appliances have to be ordered as a package and installed built-in.
• Financing on a new unit is available and the cash matters more than the total.

Scratch and dent is the most consistently underrated category, for one reason: most appliance damage is on a surface nobody will ever see again once it's installed.

• The damage is on a side panel that will sit between two cabinets.
• The damage is on the back or the top of a unit going under a counter.
• It's a dent in the bottom kick panel.
• You get the full manufacturer warranty — always confirm this, because it varies by retailer and by whether the unit was ever registered.

Be more careful when the damage is on a door or a visible front face, when it's a dent near a seal or a hinge, or when there's any deformation around the cabinet opening — that can stop a door sealing properly, which is a functional problem wearing cosmetic clothes. And check that a dented unit still sits square and level.

• You need a working appliance now, at the lowest sensible cost, and you're not renovating around it.
• You're furnishing a rental property or a student place, where replacement cost matters more than warranty length.
• You need a second fridge or freezer for a garage or basement — a job where a solid older unit is genuinely the right tool.
• Your old unit died suddenly and you need to not be doing laundry at a laundromat this month.
• You want a configuration that's expensive new — a large-capacity front-load pair, a French-door fridge — and the depreciation does the work for you.
• You'd rather spend less and replace sooner than spend more and hope.

Used is the category with the widest quality spread, because there's no standard behind the word. Two things separate a reasonable purchase from a gamble:

• It has been run. Not plugged in to prove the light comes on — run through an actual cycle, by someone who would have caught a fault.
• Someone stands behind it. A defined warranty period means the seller has a financial reason to have checked properly. That's the entire mechanism.

This is the real difference between a dealer and a marketplace listing, and it's worth more than the price gap between them. A private seller cannot offer you any recourse — not because they're dishonest, but because once the appliance is on your truck the transaction is over. Our units are tested on a full cycle before listing and carry a 30-day parts and labour warranty, and that's what you're paying the difference for.

Compare on cost per year, not on sticker price. A $1,400 new washer with a 12-year life is about $117 a year. A $500 tested used washer with 7 years left is about $71 a year. The used unit wins — but the gap narrows fast if the used one is older than it looks, which is exactly why testing and warranty are the things to interrogate rather than the price.

And the one case where used genuinely loses: a very old, very cheap refrigerator as a main kitchen fridge. It runs 24 hours a day, an early-90s unit can draw two to three times what a modern one does, and the hydro difference can overtake the purchase saving within a few years. For a fridge, buy the newest sound unit you can rather than the cheapest one on the lot.