My unit arrived broken I’ve contacted support for a further instructions. My question is will I be receiving a brand new never used replacement unit. Which seems logical considering I paid for a new unit. I read on another forum they send you a refurbished replacement unit.
That would not be likely.
Based on what I have read on this forum, while they have the option of giving you a refurbished unit, they haven’t so far exercised that option. I think a few users may have received interim units that were refurbished, but I can’t remember someone getting a refurbished unit. I had to get mine replaced and from what I can tell it was a brand new unit even though mine was on the edge of warranty coverage.
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Coincidentally, when we received ours, (brand spanking new), the units were tested and calibrated before shipping out, to make sure they worked, so if you see a scuff somewhere or a bit of smut, it does not necessarily mean it’s been refurbished. (Just that they got sloppy with cleaning it up.) 
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Several people have complained about getting refurbished units, actually.
I get why people are upset, but sometimes refurbs are even better than new.
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I don’t know, that’s definitely not the case when it comes to cellphones 
In a case like this, I’m not sure it’s ever fair to receive a refurbished unit when it’s DOA, if the person had used it for a month or two, then sure, refurb is industry standard. If I were to buy a new laptop from say, Dell.com, and it arrived broken, I would expect a new replacement; that should be the case here, as well.
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One thing that happens very quickly as the energy bounces back and forth between copper mirrors is that a few atoms at a time are bounced loose in the vacuum and come to rest on the sides of the tube causing increasingly dark color, and eventually the life of the tube. Like rowing a boat across a large lake it is very hard to tell if you are 1/4 of the way there or 1/2 the way there, but very easy to tell if you are just starting out. And so it is with the power tube. If it is clear it is new; if it has a copperish color it could be 10 hours of operation or 100.
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2 weeks on my phone from AT&T. Refurbished replacement.
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That’s always been my philsophy. Typically I’ll seek out refurbs when purchasing something. Then I know for sure that somebody has thoroughly gone over it and tested it. I realize, in the case of the Glowforge, that that’s already happening with every unit, but I still stand by the philosphy. 
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Yeah, I’m not arguing for it necessarily, just saying that refurbs have often gone through more rigorous testing.
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I can see both sides to the argument. A refurbished unit usually has an obvious issue that is made completely right and so comes out as new. Everyone is happy.
But as a life long test engineer it is well understood that testing and quality control will only find those problems that the tester expects to find. If a user returns a unit because of an intermittent issue or something that slipped by initial production QC the fault will quite often slip through the refurbishment process. The technicians are not given a lot of information about why a unit was returned. So they run through the same production level testing and pump it out the door.
Can’t say whether the contracted repair process is better for GF. Maybe it is, maybe it’s not.
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Officially, replacement units can be new or used, depending on inventory. Unofficially, we aim to send new units to people when they have DOAs.
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Sorry, I was mostly kidding there. I did cellphone sales and cellphone repairs, so I got a lot of opinions from customers, including my own. With electronics, while it’s easy to repair what’s obviously broken, it’s not easy to rollback the clock on the stuff that gets used (processor, internal storage, ports, other things without obvious damage) and it’s also a lot like what rpegg said:
Not to derail what’s being posted about, just wanted to clarify, sorry again!
No worries. I truly wasn’t arguing. 
That said, a refurb unit might also just be a customer return for a changed mind. It’s not necessarily a unit that didn’t work in the first place.
Thanks for your patience. I see that we’ve followed up to your email with more information. Since we’re working on it there, I’m going to close this topic.