Flashes of Panic

We replaced A’s laptop last fall, and when, this spring, she gave me the OK to dispose of the old one, I went looking for a route which would not lead to a landfill.

What I eventually found was CashForLaptops.com, which has an attractive model: you tell them what the machine is and what its condition is, they give you a quote and then send you the packaging (and a postage-paid UPS label) and you ship it back to them. They then cut you a check based on what they received.

This last stage is the part I wasn’t impressed with. The quote I was given for A’s laptop, a 4-year-old Dell with visible wear on the case and a bad monitor connection (an external monitor was needed to use it) was $55. The check we eventually received was $5.

My brother had slightly better luck, trading in my 2001-vintage G3 iBook with a busted hinge for $25 (original quote: $65).

I think the problem here is that the up-front questionnaire used to generate the quotes does not ask enough questions, or the right questions. It doesn’t ask how old the machine is, if the case shows wear, or the condition of several components, all things which are eventually used to set the final price. There is a check box for damaged LCD, which I checked, but nothing for estimating the condition of the case, for example.

To be fair, I might have had a more realistic quote had I called the listed toll-free number and questioned the original quote directly rather than simply sending in the machine and waiting for the quoted check. I haven’t seen much online feedback for the site; all the articles I can find read like they were paid for by the site owners (and some of them read like practice essays for a writing test).

In the final analysis, however, the laptop is not in a landfill (or at least most of it isn’t, I assume) and we didn’t have to pay to dispose of it, so I’m marking cashforlaptops.com as a net win.