As many of you are aware, I’ve had a zillion problems with my computer.
Time to get a new one but in the last year I spent 20 grand cash remodeling my house, bought a new corvette, and am in litigation with a crooked real estate attorney I hired to sell a property my wife inherited.
I’m far from broke but I need to be a bit frugal in '15.
So I answered a few ads (3) on Craigslist for used/refurbished computers.
Every one was a middle-aged guy in his basement with 2 dozen computers set up. Every guy claimed to be a computer programer and was doing this on the side. All the computers worked great, and had Windows 7, Office 2010, ect.
When asked where they got the computers it was always a quick answer of “when people are done with them I buy them cheap and refurbish them”
All the computers ranged in price from $35-$100, the average being $75.
The houses aren’t rentals and were in decent parts of town.
So what’s going on here? Are these units really just old refurbished or are they possible stolen? The one guy had a Dell for $50 that worked fantastic and had every bell & whistle you could think of. Are guys like this legit or am I walking into something?
This assumes they acquired the computer with intact licenses for Windows and Office. However, refurbishing a computer takes time and effort. I would be highly suspect one can buy a used machine, refurbish it (with intact licensing) and sell it at a profit for $35-$100. Maybe a possibility if the person doing it writes off their time.
So you saw a machine that worked great. Did you buy right there? Of did they say it would be ready tomorrow, come back then (bait and switch)?
I suspect they are fences for others acquiring (ahem!) laptops and dumping them for a few bucks to those to refurbish them.
TigerDirect and NewEgg both sell new and refurbished laptops. Granted they need to make a profit so their prices will be higher. They are worth looking into to be assured of a safe machine.
People—and, especially, companies—get rid of older computers all the time, because they upgrade every so often. If the computers you’re seeing for sale are a few years old, this may be legit. The “refurbishing” involved may just be some basic cleaning and testing to make sure everything’s working properly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are sketchy elements-- particularly with, say, Windows or Office licenses that aren’t exactly legit – but things are probably mostly legit.
Getting a slightly out-of-date (but still good enough for anything most people want to do) computer is easy and cheap, say $20 if it’s full of crapware & viruses. Spend 45 minutes re-installing windows, sell it for $100 and you’ve made a decent profit.
The local ComputronMart sells good-enough refurbished computers for $100-$130, including definitely legit licenses, so it’s clearly possible to make a profit on it.
Me, I’d recommend going right to the CompuMart, since I’d rather pay $25 more and not risk getting a bad license.
I used to have a few people for which I maintained their computer and helped them out of trouble and recommended the upgrade. Some were willing to give me their old box, which for some was not that old. While I could have resold it, I normally just upgraded mine if theirs was ‘better’.
I believe all licenses to be transferable this way, but I don’t know. If I had a few more people doing this I may have had enough to start selling them. As for cost, the computer was free, perhaps 1-2 hrs for the clean install, but much of that time is waiting, which I could do other things. So the price seems in line.
I do this occasionally. My company discards computer equipment semi-regularly and, before the electronics recycling people come, employees are free to take whatever they want. Sometimes the computers are just out of date, but work fine. Sometimes there’s something wrong, but it’s a simple enough fix (just not worth it for the IT guy to spend his time on, especially when the computer is not far from being discarded for age anyway).
I’ve also had friends give me their old computers, again, usually because something was wrong with it and it wasn’t worth their time to fix it. My wife’s employers now give me their old computers, too, since I’ll securely wipe the drives for them and then sell the systems.
When the hardware is free, it’s not hard to make $50+ an hour doing this (although it’s very unsteady work). I just put Linux on them. They sell for a little bit less than if I were to sell them with Windows, but not enough less to pay for the Windows license or the risk of getting caught up in some craigslist BSA sting if I were to pirate it. The price difference is small, which leads me to believe that the people who buy them are just putting pirated copies of Windows on them anyway.
All the computers at each place were cash and carry ready to go right then. All the guys had business cards and flyers identifying themselves.
Don’t know about the licenses. But if the software had legitimately been installed on the computer when new, is it illegal for it to stay on when the computer changes owner?
Did a check online and CCAP. Every guy owned the house they were in, and none had so much as a traffic ticket on their records.
I’m trying to be convinced that their stories were true. $50 for that Dell seemed pretty good. He let me sit and use it for a half hour. It was like greased lightning and had everything on it.
This is the case. It’s not difficult to legally find cheap computer hardware but software is more tricky.
The Windows license may be legitimate. If the installed OS matches the version printed on the license sticker they probably used the bundled OEM Windows license.
But if you are getting, say, Windows 7, on a computer that predates it you won’t be getting a legit install. Depending on exactly how the license was obtained it’s possible Windows Activation will flag the install as not genuine at some future (or not so future) time.
The Office installs (assuming MS Office) are not going to be legit. The Office license would cost more than the computer. It could be a cracked install, a illegitimately used volume license key, or installed without a product key. That last one has a time limit before a product key and activation are required.
Edited to add: The previous owner’s licenses are almost certainly not validly transferable. Only retail Windows/Office licenses can be transferred, and companies don’t use those. The volume license versions of Windows (or Office) can only be used on computers owned by the organization that purchased the volume agreement and have to be removed when the computer’s ownership changes.
Depends on the spec’s. I mean $100 for a computer is not that great of a computer, even as a refurb. Not even counting the licenses for software, the hardware for $100 can’t be that great.
It’s be a lot easier to judge how great of a deal this is if we know 1) the system spec’s in question, 2) what YOUR expectations are.
That was my thinking. I could see a refurbished box with 1.8GHz Core processor, onboard video, 2GB RAM and a 250gig hard drive selling for under $100 by someone who got it for free but I wouldn’t be tempted to buy it.
On the other hand, for someone who just wants to hit the internet, Youtube and e-mail, it might be more than sufficient.
IMHO, it’s a highly risky business, on both sides.
For the refurbisher/seller, the cost of the unit must be close to zero, or it’s not worth it.
For the buyer, he’s getting goods that are not only obsolete upon purchase, but have a likely short lifespan, even if warranteed. Tech support? None – if the seller offers any, he’s a fool, as his profit will be eaten up before he opens the case or answers the phone.
If you’re a sophisticated buyer, you can fix problems, but then why are you buying this kinda crap at all? If you’re not sophisticated buyer, and something happens, you are probably going to blame the refurbisher, who can’t afford to advise you why you are wrong, and can’t afford to fix it. Both of you will be unhappy.
So my advice is avoid these kinds of deals unless you understand the numerous risks, can handle them, and don’t mind being burned once in a while.
Myself, I just was given 4 desktop PC units in (supposedly) working condition, each about 5-10 years old. I can put them to use for non-demanding tasks, but the time it will take to get them working adequately is unknown, possibly excessive. I’m thinking of tossing them in the dumpster instead, and buying cheap, new parts and/or fully-functional whitebox units where needed.
You gotta do what you gotta do, but I would **never **buy a used computer off Craigslist. A used computer can easily run perfectly for 6 years or quit in 6 minutes. And buying it that way you have absolutely no recourse. The PC desktop market has been in free fall for the last couple of years because of smartphones & tablets, therefore it’s not hard to find good deals on refurbished units online from places like TigerDirect, NewEgg, Best Buy, even manufacturers like HP & Dell. As good as buying new in terms of warranty. And you’ll always get a legit OS license and they usually sell ‘barebones’ boxes, ones without peripherals which you probably already have (monitor, mouse, keyboard etc.)
A couple of years ago, I bought a used computer from a professional(-ish) refurbisher on ebay (which is probably a step up in legitimacy from Craigslist, but still the same sort of business). I bought it because I specifically wanted an XP machine to replace my old XP desktop that died (I have one or two programs that won’t run on anything newer), and, as I wasn’t expecting to use it as my main computer, I didn’t have high requirements for performance or reliability, and have no need for any tech support. It came (as advertised) with OpenOffice and not much else installed beyond the operating system, and I was and am satisfied with it. (I did find out after I bought it that I’d need to buy a separate keyboard that connected via USB, but that was easily taken care of.)
They are highly unlikely to be stolen, especially in quantity. They are most likely culled from electronics recyclers or dumped for pocket change by businesses upgrading. Occasionally you will see govt agencies auctioning them off by the pallet load, whenever that happens I end up seeing half a dozen of them that still have issues after they had been “refurbished”.
Many of the independent e-waste types floating around have a “network” of people who will buy selected items for more than recycle value but still cheap enough to resell at a profit (say $10-20 for a typical desktop). So LCD TV’s that need a little soldering or desktops that need a power supply or a hard drive can still be profitably fixed, reloaded clean, and resold.
I have several such guys who buzz my shop and offer to sell me stuff I occasionally buy one.
I have dabbled in the market and backed out as for lack of a better explanation, nobody diminishes their expectations for a crap machine or they attribute the quality of all my work to the perceived performance of a $75 12 year old windows XP machine. Most of the people who want to shop in that market are not the people you want as customers.
Example: I sold a guy a decent working used tower for $100
uses it for 3 days viruses the hell out of it, comes in throwing a hissy fit about the “piece of crap computer I sold him” I check it out, show him the virus scans, tell him we charge $79 to fix it… now I am a “Thief” because "he could just buy another computer for $100 and wants to abandon that virused machine and feels I should just give him another one.
I’ve seen comments by plenty of people (I think on these boards but if not then elsewhere) whose basic attitude towards computers is very much that of the throwaway society. That is, once they have a problem of any substance with a computer they just buy a new one and throw away the old one. And by “problem of any substance” I mean “just barely a problem of substance”.
I don’t find it at all hard to believe that if you had the right connections you could source computers with barely anything wrong with them (to someone who knows what they are doing) and make them near perfect very easily.
My understanding is the OEM software (the OS and other stuff that ships with the computer) is not transferable from one computer to another, but ‘locked’ to that and only that computer, but the computer and software licenses can be transferred together.
The Windows and Office licenses may be problematic. Very often they will be installed using Volume License Keys which are registered to a particular company. So you’ll be fine until you come to reinstall, at which point the licenses will be invalid.