In my opinion I dont think you need to worry about high shutter counts. Most refurbs are cameras people have bought, opened the box and didnt want so took back, had minor faults or bought the camera and returned it within the 28 days because the product didnt meet expectation.
Refurb units are usually like new, they go through a stringent evaluation, replacement, adjustment and cleaning process. This makes sure that all electronic parts are working correctly, and are within manufacturers tolerances. Basically just the same as if it were a new product. In fact you will find that a refurb unit will be better than a high production run camera, as only 1 in probably 1000 or even 10,000 are checked. Where as the refurb will be tested to the extreme and will be perfect without flaw within manufactures tolerances. (but the word refurb reduces its value second hand significantly).
It is highly unlikely that any refurb will have more than a couple of hundred shots (I would say that a couple of hundred is quite high) and seen as tho most shutters are good for 150,000 theres not much to worry about. Also your warranty is re-instated, so you have that safety net. I would be more worried about the condition of the body, scratches etc. But even scuffed bodies will be deemed unsaleable, so either replaced or written off. If there are scratches on the body they will be extremely minor, if you have used any of the semi or pro cameras they are really robust and quite hard to mark badly without an impact. If there were an impact they would be written off straight away.
In fact cameras are similar to cars... everyone wants a low milage car but if the car is old like 10 years and has less than 30k on the clock I would be worried. Equipment that is used a lot generally is more reliable, equipment that is used every once in a while is more likely to have faults. Obviously you get wear and tear, but I have a good example. Canon 10/20/30/40/50/300/350/400/450/500/550/600D's have a shutter button problem, when used contaminants get in (finger muck, greese, sweat, sand, water etc) but if used alot the button is depressed so many times it clears itself, the same happens if you dont use it as much but the contaminant sticks and doesn't move and builds with dust etc so when you come to use it the button is very unreliable. The contacts dont work properly leading to some risky home fixes or £200 from Canon.
This happened to me, I was shooting with two 40ds a few years ago one as a back up and one as my main camera. the one that i used commercially worked flawlessly for the 3 years I owned it with well over 150,000 actuations. The other back up, seized at 14000!!!. Same with vehicles again, anything rubber like seals belts, gasket seals go quicker if they are not used. Under maintenance they will not have been deemed replaceable through milage. So you buy a 10 year old porsche great buy give it some stick and its in the garage the week later... unless you know what you are looking for. Interesting to think about.
Tom scott
