3RD UPDATE: A fourth call was also tried on Friday, and it ended up at a seeming dead-end, but eventually (today, Saturday) a specialist emailed me to tell me the warranty had been fixed. Which may have been moved along by a Redditor, though it's unclear. SO my tablet is now officially under warranty again, so I should be able to get it replaced.

2ND UPDATE: A third call to Microsoft may have resolved the issue. They're claiming that there was a "miscommunication" to their management staff. Twice. And that now things are "fixed" and that I should expect a return label by tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

UPDATE: Amazon emailed Microsoft and says that if Microsoft doesn't reply, they'll refund under the A-to-Z warranty. We'll see what happens.

I bought my Surface Pro 3, refurbished, last August via the Microsoft Store on Amazon. It claimed to come with a 1 year limited warranty.

A few days ago the battery stopped being able to power the Surface. It says "Battery 73%; Not Charging", but won't charge any higher, even when shut down, and when you unplug it, it dies instantly. Found a support page that covers this exact failure, and ran through the "Solutions." Twice. The last options is "Contact Us." So I went to the Microsoft site and was shocked to see that they didn't consider my device to be under the warranty any longer.

I've been run around their support desk several times, escalating twice. They insist they can't "change" the warranty, and that I have to pay $450 to get a replacement device. Half the cost of the new device, and I haven't even had it for a year.

Buyer beware: If you pick up a refurbished device from Microsoft, the warranty apparently only extends from the original purchase date (mine apparently expired in June), which you'll have no way of knowing until you register your device. If the device has been on sale for more than a year, it could potentially have an expired warranty immediately on registration; the customer support people actually insisted that there was no warranty for the refurbished device, which is actually against Amazon's policy.

So I guess the answer is to either buy the extended warranty on refurbished devices or buy new, if you want to be sure your device won't fail after less than a year.

I usually self-insure on computers, figuring the (normally) 1 year warranty will cover any typical early hardware failures, and the cumulative extended warranty costs will more than buy me a replacement device if one fails after that period -- and after a couple years I'm usually ready for the next device anyway. But it's particularly painful to have a device die before the one-year warranty is up and have them refuse to honor it.

If someone happens to know that Microsoft actually does have a shorter warranty for refurbished items, I guess that would be good to know. But my Amazon receipt says right on it "1 year limited warranty", so at the very least they screwed up in that respect.

Not sure if it's worth fighting any longer. Already burned too much time on it. But I thought I'd throw out a warning to the community; hope it prevents others from falling into the same trap.