Never Knowingly Oversold

For many years John Lewis used the strap-line ‘never knowingly undersold’ and would match any price for the same goods. It was a good plan. John Lewis had and probably still has a reputation for being just a tad classier than other stores on the High Street. Waitrose is right up there, just below Marks & Spencer’s in most shoppers’ eyes I believe. Good stuff but you pay a little more would be the general perception and the marketing men like to attack those perceptions a little. I doubt if it cost them much as only a few people would bother to compare prices.

As a B2B marketer, I have always had this weird dream of using the strap-line ‘reassuringly expensive’. For my (many) sins, I have usually ended up working for market leaders who always wanted to focus on value rather than price. And we all know what that means, right?

However, my personal theory is as follows. No one buys on price. Not really. It is part of the decision of course but in a zillion surveys price is always fourth or fifth on the list. Whatever we are buying we want it to do what it says, to last, to taste good, to work and to solve our problems. Especially when we are at work, we do not want problems. We might buy own brand baked beans at home to save a few bob but at work we like to cover our behinds and get it right first time.

And if you are doing something important, something that has risk attached to it, the first thing on your mind is not buggering it up. So if you are choosing a business partner, product or service to help you do something with potential downsides, quality is higher on your list than price. In fact, if the price of something or someone looks too cheap, we are immediately suspicious.

I had this conversation with a client the other week. Our price was much higher than an alternative and he wanted to know why. And as always the devil was in the details. We were intending to go that bit further you see, and for good reasons. In this instance, our price was reassuringly expensive because it proved our attention to detail, our desire to keep our clients completely data safe.

I have said it before and I will say it again, disposing of data bearing equipment is risk management, plain and simple. If your data is breached, you get fined and maybe even publicly humiliated. It’s not good and you want to avoid that, almost at all costs. So you want to work with someone who understands the risks but is reasonable about them.

I never overplay the risks. People are blasé about their data because relatively few get caught. The same thing used to apply to drink-driving and speeding when I was younger. There were no speed cameras back then, no Christmas road blocks to worry about. So people took chances. Businesses take similar chances with their data all the time.

eReco look to eliminate risk. We have two overriding principles, sustainability and data security, and our service offers as close to 100% on both as is humanly possible. That adds costs. It is quite inevitable and, as I tell anyone who wants to cut costs, reducing the price means cutting corners. It is possible to erase data without paying a license fee, but the data is technically recoverable. So that is a risk. Your choice sunshine.

In broad terms, if you are getting rid of a lot of stuff, you will find us more cost effective. If you are getting rid of 2 PC’s and a monitor, it might look a bit steep when you see the bill. That is just economies of scale. But if you are concerned about the law, and about the risks of not abiding by it, you will not be focussed on the price.

The Value of Everything and the Price of Nothing

Re-marketing is always the best option with electrical equipment. Environmentally I mean. 

All the damage is done during manufacture, so squeezing a bit longer out of things is good for everyone. Eventually it can be broken down and all the bits can be used again, but lifecycle extension is the way to go. So when you dispose of an old computer or laptop, you should be happy to see it cleaned up, tested and sold on to someone else.

However, it is entirely reasonable that you should benefit from any resale, if at all possible. No one is really arguing about that, least of all me. Just as long as you recognise that it is equally reasonable that you pay for all the other bits that have to be done to protect you. Regular readers will understand that I am talking about data erasure, logistics, boring old paperwork. It is all costs.

As I have said before, you have to be reasonable. If your old kit is conspicuously on its last legs and is over three years old, it is not going to earn you anything. It is waste. It is going to cost you to dispose of but you will do so safe in the knowledge that we have protected your data and done our bit for sustainability.

But today I want to look at good kit, or good kit at face value. Because you have to remember that we do not see it until we get it in the back of our van. Good laptops can get very good prices on the market, if you know where to look. I valued a job last week and the expected resale price was between £200 and £500, dependent on condition and actual specification. Because we rarely get an accurate asset list from our clients. We tend to get told there will be X number of laptops, and they might all be XXXXX and the specification might be XXXX. And then they want an estimate of value.

It is our habit to then give 3 prices; good, average and scrap. And the client then has to try and work what they will get out for themselves. But you can see how someone might get excited, because at £500 a pop we might have been handing back £50,000 after our revenue share. That is something to get quite excited about.

Until you find out they aren’t XXX after all, they are YYY. And half of them are broken beyond repair in any case. They certainly aren’t in mint condition. But that does not matter, because we will still do the best we can, but you can forget about the big number.

My take on this is to play it down. Very few people get big paydays from recycling their equipment and most of them know full well that they are getting rid of good gear. They normally have a reason to refresh early and they know the price of fish as it were. With everyone else, if the estimate suggests value we highlight it but emphasise that it is all down to reality.

But my advice would be give us a chance to see the value. When disposing of your assets, don’t just give us the highlights; give us the detailed specs if you can. It will get you a better deal, a fairer price and you will know exactly where you stand right from the get go.