I ordered my garnet red S3 refurb from AT&T on 1/10/13 for $29.99. My first choice was a Galaxy Note 2, and I was waiting for some refurbished models to come out. It's been only 2 months since the GN2 release, and probably the refurbs wouldn't show up for another few months. A full price phone isn't in my budget now, and I've had good luck with refurbs in the past. Anyways, the $29.99 was too good to pass up. I missed the $29.99 deal in December.
I've had it for several days, and so far, I'm quite happy. Yes, the GN2 would have been nice, but for the $270 I'm saving, that buys a lot of accessories. I'm more of a desktop user anyways. I love my dual monitor desktop rig and am not a cell phone power user anyways.