[AV Media Matters] Buying Used Equipment - in general

[Jim Lindner <jim@vidipax.com>]

I thought it might be interesting to broaden the used CD thread by
discussing the issues of buying used equipment in general. I guy a great
deal of used equipment for the company and have for many years - so I
have learned allot in that - I have made some excellent purchases, many
average purchases, and yes I have gotten ripped off too - but not very
often.

Here is the way I look at it.
First I consider the technology I am buying and the magnitude of the
purchase and magnitude of potential savings. For instance at the moment
used Digibeta Machines with all the stuff run around $40k - and new ones
- around $45K if you know where to buy. Is the savings really worth it?
Even in absoulute dollar terms - the answer for me is no. If the heads
are worn on a used DigiBeta that alone could easily wipe out savings.
The machine is likely to have high service here - so the cost of having
it being repaired will be high both in the terms of the cost of repair
and the cost of not having the machine to use in production. On the
other hand - this is an example of what I consider to be a
technologically "stable" product. The models that are available are old
- there have been no new digibeta deck models in many years - and so the
risk of not getting some new features is minimal - the machines will
make money for the company.

There are other cases. Take racks for instance. Racks are racks - more
or less. They are functional - they are hard to destroy, they are big
and expensive to ship, and new ones are very expensive. I buy all my
racks used.

I buy machines used that I can't get new. If I have a specific need that
a particular machine meets - I will buy it even if it is old - provided
of course that I can fix it. And we ALWAYS ASSUME WHEN WE BUY USED
EQUIPMENT FROM SOMEONE WE DONT KNOW LIKE ON EBAY THAT IT WILL REQUIRE
SERVICE. Period. We do NOT put it into service until we have our people
go over it - inside and out (and yes there is a cost associated with
that).

I will buy expensive used machines from a used equipment that I do allot
of business with. I won't plug them - but we buy hundreds of thousands
of dollars each year with them. I KNOW that if there are any problems
they will take it back and give us another or will credit us. We know
our stuff - they know we know - so they don't intentionally ship us
anything that is not in top shape because they know that if they do it
will come flying back to them. If you can get that type of relationship
it is great because the risk is very minimal.

In general I will NOT buy things like a CD-R recorder used.  Simple
reason is that there is no real cost benefit. To save $50 no matter how
good the used equipment is will not be justifyable even in terms of the
time of getting it in and testing it. For those type of things we go on
the net and find a reasonable reseller that we have heard of and just
buy it on line. It is the cheapest way when you consider all the costs -
so if an item is low cost - we will not buy it used.

I hope this helps others. I would like to hear what others do -

jim

Jim Lindner - President
VidiPax - The Magnetic Media and Information Migration Full Services
Company
Telephone 212-563-1999
www.vidipax.com
Moderator of A/V Media Matters@topica.com