In the approach of the 3-year anniversary of my buying a new computer, I decided to finally find a home for my world-traveling gaming laptop. Seriously, I bought an Asus G50v way back in the day expressly because I was studying abroad in Japan and I wanted something that could play Battlefield 2 when I got back. The laptop performed its intended function admirably, granting many, many years of mobile desktop gaming (shit weighed over 6 lbs) through some of the heaviest WoW raiding periods in my GMing career. The world moves ever onward however, and I felt terribly guilty for leaving it in a closet drawer for the last two years, especially when it was effectively and permanently obsoleted by my $179 tablet purchase this summer.

But… what exactly can you do with such technology? eBay? Craigslist? The laptop itself worked perfectly fine, at least in the era before sub-20 second SSD boot times and 1080p resolution standards (seriously, it had a 1440×900 screen). I almost could not consider selling it to a family member out of good conscience. But who knows what the actual market price would be.

Enter Cash4Laptops. Actually – spoilers! – don’t enter there. It is unlinked on purpose.

Total bullshit.

As you might imagine, I was rather excited to see the potential of “up to” $330 for my aging beast. So I submitted my order, got prepaid labels, shipped it off to the Nevada pasture, and awaited their inspection report. Then it arrived:

Hi XXXXXX,

Good news: your device arrived safely at our facility and just received a professional appraisal by our qualified device inspectors.

Nothing to do now but receive your cash!

After carefully inspecting your device by hand, seeing its condition, and following up-to-the-minute market conditions—you’re owed $52 for the device.

“Fifty-fucking-two dollars? What the literal shit?! Are they selling it on Pawn Stars?”

Now, on the one hand, obviously yeah “terms & conditions” blah blah. It’s a used laptop, no question. But my problem with the valuation isn’t even that it came in at 15% of the quoted price, but that it was less than half of what they would supposedly pay for a laptop that didn’t even turn on. You can’t even make up bullshit like that. How “used” does used have to be to be worth less than a laptop that doesn’t even power on? Did they open up the case and find a wasp nest inside? It still boggles my mind.

In any case, I asked for clarification on the valuation, was told to call in, did so, was transferred to the Purchasing department, left on hold for 40 minutes, and finally spoke to someone who admitted my laptop was inspected to be in “flawless” condition. The guy went on to say that the release of the Surface 3 has been a “slap in the face” to the old laptop market in general, and prices are in freefall. While I was forced to take the dude’s word on face value at the time, it appears to be reasonably accurate after all. Still, the terms & conditions mentioned they had to ship it back at no cost if I didn’t like the new value (within three days), and there were other, competing websites that were offering more than $52.

Before I could express that sentiment however, the guy said “Okay, how about I round it up to $100 and we’ll cover the Paypal fees?” Okay then. Deal.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is A) don’t be particularly surprised if you get a Pawn Stars-level lowball offer when using these sites, and B) dispute the valuation, especially if they have to send the thing back for free. Getting an extra $48 (and a blog post) for putting my smartphone on speaker while I browsed Reddit with a beer is pretty damn time efficient. Was the laptop worth even more than $100? Obviously yes, if they could so easily “round up” to the next hundred bucks. But I got more than I started with and no longer have to worry about it anymore, so I consider it a win.