Why E2 is picky about taking in used/old equipment. 08082012

We have often been told we were missing the buck, but unlike buying a used machine on Craigs list or from  a tech in a truck, we have a location customers come back to. Often in the refurbish business computers don’t last or they are slow and do not meet the customers expectations shortly after they get them.  So our philosophy was to gather parts and send most computers to recycling.  The exceptions are when we get computers that are modern enough. 

The point of this blog is to help others see what we see in the definition of modern.  Most people without a compute you would think would be happy to have a computer that works and can be used to connect them to the world.  However in the Donation Program for Low Income sponsored by the FCC the recycler they are using defines an acceptable machine as this

“Computing recycling company Redemtech will refurbish the donated computers. In its program, called the PC Pledge 100, Redemtech will accept donations of used computers from organizations. A donated computer should have an Intel Core 2 Duo processor or equivalent, at least 2GB RAM and an 80GB hard drive. It should also have a DVD player, a wireless Internet card and Ethernet connectivity“. For more about the FCC program check out this link.

Odd they require both and ethernet and wireless connection on every machine.  Today most company machines even at the i5 and i7 CPU do not always have wireless, because net every office wants this capability. So does that mean their machines are not good for donation.  Another odd issue is minimum memory requirement, most Vista machines 2-4 years old were only built with 1 or 2 G of memory, one of the problems that killed Vista. So often computers we see do not even meet FCC standards for donation. 

The other issue we faced is what to do with the scrap. For almost 2 years in 2005 and 2006 I could not get a recycler to take stuff unless we paid. Today thankfully it is different and the only thing we have had to pay for are old CRT monitors, we pass the cost to the customer if we can take it in, space in our office is very limited.

So based on the above description you can see we were trying to create a higher standard for systems we would sell as refurbished.  Now that does not mean we do not resell a system that has only 1G of memory, but it does mean we trash way more than we try to sell.  While used equipment is more profitable customer satisfaction, and useability are way more important in our business model.

We hope that this is insightful in understanding what our business is all about and our motto or tag line is “End 2 End Support” we are not just trying to sell something and disappear.