New pre-amplifier?

You don’t , and what brand is it and price , when buying a preamp Never 

buy one with a  $20  Alps blue velvet look in your preamp ,

prima luna a perfect example $5k and you see a round Silver round can 

which is just 2 plastic wipers with a contact spray on the plastic 

youwant a resistive ladder, or relay which is night and day better l

Linear Tube Audio makes a excellent preamp that is built far better then most for under $6k.

Why, would a manufacturer risk their reputation in this day and age, when anything even remotely underhanded is reported all over the internet?

Perhaps, you should go to the factory, and watch them build the unit and package it up for you?

Companies that sell direct, have B-Stock listings specifically to deal with gear that either has some blemish, or, something that has been returned.

Dealers have B-Stock listings also.

What would possibly make you think that this would be some kind of action the company you’re buying from would do? Is there any evidence of this? If there is, why would you buy from them? If there isn’t, where is this paranoia coming from?

I’m with yy.

I’ve bought remanufactured computers and and even some lawn care equipment and never had a problem.

@audioman - you have something against ALPS?  LOL.  Counterpoint used carbon pots in their preamps that were $5K!.  But that was way back in the day!  Prima Luna besides looking at the volume control, take a look at the names on the other parts!

Happy Listening.

First of all, it is illegal in every state to sell a used product as new stock. That said, B-stock, returns, or factory refurbs get another round of quality testing before sale, and so actually have a lower failure rate than new components. 

Some years ago I visited a production facility for PC Ethernet adapters. The entire factory required only 5 people to operate. QC consisted of conducting a POST (Power-On Self Test). Cards that completed POST were deemed good, the others were sent to junk, with no attempts to repair. It was explained to me that of the cards that would POST less than 0.1% would fail (1 in 1,000) within the first few hours of operation, after that less than 0.001% (1 in 100,000) would fail over the next 5 years, and after that, the failure rate would slowly drift up until about year 10, when the cards would be obsolete. Their MIL-Spec cards were identical, but got 48 Hrs of burn in, and cost 5-10x as much. For context, this facility made over a million cards per year. The point is almost all electronics share this same basic failure curve. After the first few hours or days, failures are very rare until you reach the end of their service life. Tubes are replaceable wear units (think tires and brakes), but also are still quite reliable after the initial burn-in.

That's why lots of us prefer refurb units. They may have had an early failure or were misconfigured, but as others have pointed out, received additional burn-in and testing, and so are more reliable than new, but cannot be sold as new, so are discounted.