HP offers money for old tech equipment

Hewlett-Packard has decided to offer people in the United States money in exchange for their old tech equipment, the company announced Tuesday.

The PC maker has had a recycling program for years that lets consumers determine the value of their old tech equipment, then receive a credit for that value toward a new HP or Compaq brand product.

This new recycling program does not require people to buy anything to realize a monetary gain from giving HP their old tech equipment, though they are responsible for postage when mailing in the item. The shipping costs associated with a "Premium Service," in which FedEx picks up the old electronics, are taken out of HP's check to the consumer.

Some green-spring news during this gray winter: an old Dell Inspiron will garner a check of about $60 through HP's expanded recycling program.

(Credit: Candace Lombardi)

HP calls its new program the HP Consumer Buyback and Planet Partners Recycling Program. The program offers money in exchange for any brand of PC, monitor, printer, digital camera, or smartphone that HP determines still has some sort of value. It's part of HP's effort to recycle 2 billion pounds of electronic junk by 2010. As of now, the company has recycled more than 1 billion pounds of e-waste.

It's like Antiques Roadshow for techies, only you don't have to go to the fair to find out what your attic junk is worth.

HP has a quote Web site for the buyback program that lets consumers input the specs of their old tech equipment and receive a free instant quote.

In testing out the system, I discovered that HP offers examples from a drop-down menu, but will also accept items that have been modified, and it offers a place to put in the modified configuration and evaluate it. For example, I found that an old Dell Inspiron notebook with a 20GB hard drive, 256 MB of RAM, a Pentium III M 1.0GHz processor, and loaded with Windows XP Professional is worth about $60.

If your tech junk is determined by the online tool to have no value, you're out of luck for financial gain, but if it's an HP or Compaq brand product, you can still opt to mail it to HP for recycling.

I took it one step further and tested out the value of the same old Dell laptop against HP's U.S. trade-in recycling program, which is another option for consumers. On trade-in, the same old Dell Inspiron gets me an $86 credit.

Given this economy, I'd say it's worth your time to look up the value of your electronic junk on HP's site and make that trip to the post office.

[jtoverath]

If someone is sending in an item for buyback or recycling then how is the money "free"?

[dwholler]

its given as a credit on a purchase

[dwholler]

OKI Printing Solutions also has a trade in program available here.

http://oki.tradeups.com/

[sanenazok]

It's exactly the same engine...except for different color scheme!

[trd1282]

I just signed up, am I responsible for boxes if I signed up for the premium shipping?

[Idyot]

No. The 1st sentence below says that for standard shipping you provide the box/packing and take it to UPS. Premium Shipping is where you give it to the FedEX driver as is, and $10 gets deducted from your buy-back quote.

Premium Shipping*
When utilizing the standard shipping process, you will need to package the product, apply the provided shipping label and drop it off at a local UPS shipping location. For an additional fee of $10, FedEx will come to your home to pick up your product. Simply indicate that you would like to purchase this convenient service when entering the information on your product. Your buy-back quote will then reflect this premium shipping service.

[trd1282]

Awesome. It seems like a really goof deal. I just got $150.00 for an old Toshiba A15-S129, with a 2.4 ghz celeron, 256mb PC133 RAM, and a 40GB hard drive, running Ubuntu 8.10. I honestly had no idea what I was going to do with the thing before I read this article.

[i_made_this]

HP doesn't offer offer (much) money for old tech, nor do they pay a smidgen more for their own products - even "brand-new" HP products.

Like many OEM's - particularly the ones from the "old copier" days, HP licenses this procedure out to a firm called Market Velocity Inc whose principals are former marketing-types from HP and similar OEM's.

This is a darn good business for MV when they can grab it - I priced a high-end HP desktop system which HP offered directly on their site seven months ago for $1,725.00+ (quad-core CPU @ 2.66 MHz, 8800 GTX GPU with 512 MB vRAM and a high-end HP w2107 monitor). HP's offer for this still "very new" system in "excellent condition" on their (MV) site is $74.47. The same system in "poor condition" fetched their bid of $74.47 - huh? Right - caveat emptor.

Our local system builder offered us $411.00 cash for the same system, or $475.00 credit against future purchases. I tried to buy some used laptop and desktop systems from MV but they don't resell, except to OEM's. This isn't so much food as it is math for thought.

[BigGuns149]

I have generally found most of they tech recycling programs are an utter joke whereas what they are offering to give you for the hardware. For obvious reasons I don't expect them to pay a lot considering that really complete testing of everything is time consuming and impractical so it is in their best interest to presume that most things they receive are in poor condition, but you would think that such a relatively new system would get at least a third if not half of what the comparable value for a new computer with the same specs. Even if someone used said system around the clock 24/7 from when the purchased it there wouldn't be more than a few months of wear and tear on the system. Sure use depreciates the value of the hardware particularly the PSU and the HDDs, but short of clear abuse I can't see how one could not consider that bid anything more than a token offer.

It is sad when you could probably sell a much older Pentium D and a 17" monitor on Craigslist for a $100 that they won't even offer you $200 for a system with said specs.

[Orion Blastar]

Tech that i 3 or 5 or more years old is worth nothing. Why can't we recycle tech that old and get paid for it?

[Brian]

Oh good, now PC users can recycle their PC trash for a Mac.

Awesome, now every day is a good day.

:-)

[angry jubu]

Yes - because I SO want to own an overpriced system for which no one writes software.

[trd1282]

I don't need their software, I use Apple's. And the little "overpriced" excuse has been disproved many times over.

[PunkCityKid2]

by Brian January 11, 2009 7:45 PM PST
Oh good, now PC users can recycle their PC trash for a Mac.

Awesome, now every day is a good day.

:-)
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Go eat a $10 granola bar and type your diary at starbucks...lame hipster

[cldmello]

This website sucks especially if you have a 1 or 2 yr old tech gadget!
Sell the parts separately and you'd probably make more money

[debbald]

I find this interesting since I just received a response from HP this past week stating that they don't buy back items not listed on the pull down menu. Has anyone else had this experience?

[Tech-Guy]

Anyone -including businesses- looking to recycle old e-waste for free can drop off their equipment at a local Good Will location, and they will recycle it for free. They have partnered with Dell to accomplish this.

You get a receipt too, so you can claim it as a tax deduction, etc.