Thinking of refurbishing and selling laptops.

[m5online]

Howdy guys,

I'm pretty busy these days with day job and then going home to a wife and a 2 year old and a 1 year old, which takes up most of my free off-work time. Other than a handful of core clients, I don't have time for much freelance consulting.

I've been thinking of buying, refurbishing, and selling laptops to get a little extra $$. I plan on doing this on my own time (usually evenings after kiddies have gone to bed) and listing them locally or eBay or whatever.

Anyone doing this now? What has your experience been? Any advice on where to source old laptops (other than the usual sources, eBay, CL, etc.)?

Thanks!

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Originally Posted by m5online

I'm pretty busy these days with day job and then going home to a wife and a 2 year old and a 1 year old, which takes up most of my free off-work time. Other than a handful of core clients, I don't have time for much freelance consulting.

I've been thinking of buying, refurbishing, and selling laptops to get a little extra $$. I plan on doing this on my own time (usually evenings after kiddies have gone to bed) and listing them locally or eBay or whatever.

Without getting into all the legalities I'll say for sure, if your are already time strapped, you won't have enough time for it. Buying broken machines off customers that may bring them to your physical location shaves a lot of time off, but otherwise you have to make time to meet with people and look these things over. Then on the other end you have to make time for all the tire kickers that want to see what you are selling. You are already talking about auctioning these things online, so seems obvious you don't have a shop?

[lan101]

Yeah I would say its a tough market with all the other web sites out there selling refurbished. Also dealing with local people...you got accidents and drops and all that headache. To me it wouldn't be worth it, but each to their own. Maybe gambling a little bit with some kind of extended warranty might help?

[PCX]

All I will say is that it is a HUGE chunk of our income . . . We make about as much if not more on each computer as we would if we were to repair it for our customers. Now, we are in a shop setting, which means that these laptops come to us and we run a full diagnostics before purchasing them (just as we would before ever repair), so do basically, we know exactly what we are getting into before we purchase a laptop or desktop for refurbishing. That said, it can be done if you are mobile or doing this from home, in fact, that is how we started our business and opened shop in 6 months.

I have a thread that I posted a few days ago that has a lot of information, but due to legal reasons, it was taken down temporarily. Hopefully it will get put back up with a disclaimer to keep it strictly hardware and sales.

[arrow_runner]

You're about 5 years too late. It used to be awesome money. Nowadays you just have to lowball everyone and most of the time the profit made is the same as if you had just done the repair for the person.

[PCX]

Originally Posted by arrow_runner

You're about 5 years too late. It used to be awesome money. Nowadays you just have to lowball everyone and most of the time the profit made is the same as if you had just done the repair for the person.

I agree to an extent, but its not always the case, but it may also depend on your competition as well. I will say this though. Selling new or refurbished computers, even if you are making $50 or the same as if you were to repair it for a customer, gives you opportunity to up-sell on services as well as products in your store.

[m5online]

Yes, most likely auctioning on ebay or amazon. Probably will buy a few at a time online that are dead, fixem, sell em. making some extra pocket cash. I wont have time to get back into big time side stuff until the kids are few years older.

[PCX]

Originally Posted by m5online

Yes, most likely auctioning on ebay or amazon. Probably will buy a few at a time online that are dead, fixem, sell em. making some extra pocket cash. I wont have time to get back into big time side stuff until the kids are few years older.

Just to throw this out there, If you have a good ave to sell your laptops locally (craigslist, bookoo, etc), then you can typically make a little more off each laptop simply because the customer can deal with you face to face and they can touch and feel the laptop rather than hope to God that they are not ordering a piece of crap. Other things to consider is shipping and paypal and ebay fees.

[npinc]

It's a tough gig and you need to make sure you do it right. Make sure that you are complying with Microsoft's EULA and providing media and licenses so they don't come in and make your life miserable. Another thing would be to only refurbish top end laptops. Corporate product, higher end laptops like Asus. I would stay away from the low end because they're cheap, disposable and prone to failure.

With going higher end you can give better warranties and establish a better name for yourself. It's tough slugging at first until people know that you provide an alternative to the box store/mega discounters and get tired of one year computers. Spread the word far and wide!

Good luck with it. I'd like to know how you make out.

[PCX]

Originally Posted by npinc

it's a tough gig and you need to make sure you do it right. Make sure that you are complying with microsoft's eula and providing media and licenses so they don't come in and make your life miserable. Another thing would be to only refurbish top end laptops. Corporate product, higher end laptops like asus. I would stay away from the low end because they're cheap, disposable and prone to failure.

With going higher end you can give better warranties and establish a better name for yourself. It's tough slugging at first until people know that you provide an alternative to the box store/mega discounters and get tired of one year computers. Spread the word far and wide!

Good luck with it. I'd like to know how you make out.

+1 npinc

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