I got my iMac 24" (2.8) refurb today. I am in Canada and it shipped from Rancho Cordova, CA. I just turned it on a few moments ago and it looks amazing. No dead pixels and right now it is transferring my info from my old iMac G4 1.25.
Unpacking it was a real Apple experience. It came in a white box, no pretty pictures, but everything was brand new, at least it looked like that. The stand had the protective plastic cover. The iMac was wrapped in that white puffy protective bag, even with the apple sticker on the side asking to read the software agreement before opening it. The screen had another plastic cover protecting it. It even had the separate plastic cover for the Apple logo in the back. Keyboard and mouse were brand new and it came with the iLife 09 CPU Drop-In DVD (nice touch and makes sense for Apple to include it now rather that dealing with requests after). It makes me wonder if it was refurb at all, as some have suggested.
I will check everything else once I am finished with transfer, etc. but so far everything is great.
Thanks to all forum members for the valuable information posted in MacRumors Forums about these refurshed machines. I was a little hesitant since this is my first refurb.
Congrats!
I actually prefer refurbs. Whatever's broken is fixed/replaced and it goes through full re-testing. The casing and display are assured to be "as new". Other people also report little extras once in a while (bigger drives, more RAM than spec'ed).