Scam or no?

[GTRS Fiero]

After thinking about the Warrior Fiero, it occurred to me that Barry was never part of the club, which led to wondering if he has a different Fiero, now.  This led to reflecting on charity organizations, which led to remembering one that donates computers to people in need of computers.

This particular company had come by, and shown us a video of all the things they do to help people.  They claimed to desperately need computer donations and volunteers.  Most of the computers they get are 10 or more years old, and basically junk.

So, when we retired some 3-year old computers, we got rid of everything unusable, then wiped the remaining systems, physically cleaned them, loaded Windows 10 Pro, MS Office 2016 Pro, ensured they had the latest security patches, drivers, and firmware, and various free software (Fierfox, Adobe Reader, Cute PDF, etc).  These i5 systems have 16 or more Gb of RAM, either 512Gb SSDs or 1Tb mechanical drives, add-on video cards, DVD burners, wireless keyboard/mouse, 1 or 2 22" monitors, soundbar, and a UPS.  We offered these systems (about 100) to this company.  They said we would have to pay $100 per system for their time to refurbish them.

Nothing I tried to explain would change this.  They had no idea what an i5 system or a DoD wipe was.

So, I donated the systems to the places this charity organization was supposed to have been donating.  In so doing, I discovered that the 3 XP systems shown being donated in the video were the sum total of the systems this charity organization had donated.  I had to ask myself, what happened to the many other systems in the video?

I went to the facility, and discovered that their volunteers do not understand UEFI, and there are systems that could easily have been fixed, but the "refurbishers" do not know what they're doing.  Many of the systems that were working before the "refurbishers" got their hands on them are sold for scrap.

So, scam?

[Raydar]

...
So, scam?

Or ineptitude. Or maybe a bit of both.

[GTRS Fiero]

When they take in hundreds of working systems per year at $100 per system, and most of the systems become unusable and are sold for scrap, I think they went past ineptitude.

I'm not sure where all that money goes, but if they are paying people, those people aren't volunteers.

I had 100 systems that are better than anything they had ever had.  My systems had been bench-tested with full diagnostics, and had current, licensed software on them.

I fail to see how this charity was helping anyone but themselves.

[Raydar]

When they take in hundreds of working systems per year at $100 per system, and most of the systems become unusable and are sold for scrap, I think they went past ineptitude.

...

You may be right. They might be parting them out. It would be interesting to check out some of the "second hand" computer/parts stores. Too bad you can't tag/trace some of the parts, and see where they end up. (MAC address trackers? Is that even a thing?)

The fact that they are charging you $100 per system, to pick them up, leads me to believe it's a scam. Charitable organizations don't charge you to make donations.

Edit - Hell... your company ought to open a second hand computer business. I'd buy one.

[GTRS Fiero]

I was going to deliver the computers to them.  Previously, there were complaints about volume when people made pickups at the office.  I do not understand why people are so loud in an office.

It is possible to track some of the parts.  Servers can often be tracked.  We tracked some stolen servers.

There is a big company, EPC, near here that sells off-lease systems for reasonable prices.  They have a parent company that leases computers, then gives the off-lease systems to EPC.  EPC then re-conditions the systems and sells them.  EPC used to do full testing and refurbing, but now they do not test or clean the systems.  Lots of their inventory is available online.

My boss refuses to do anything like that, refuses vendor relationships, refuses even the ISP partnerships (you know, where when I sell a contract worth $3,000 per month, we get paid $3,000).

The thing that really irritated me was that we checked with the charity before we spent all the time and effort reloading the systems, and they said that sure, they'd take them.  No mention of any $100 per system, or any cost at all.  I--an IT professional--personally refurbed the systems, as opposed to their barely computer literate volunteers.

On the other hand, we have people apply yo work for us, and I ask them to plug up a computer as part of the technical interview.  Most of them ask to use Google.  If they cannot connect a computer without using Google, they need to be in some other field than computers--maybe cleaning pigpens.

[Fierofool]

Barry was a member of a motorcycle club and I believe that was his only transportation.  Good weather and bad.  During the time he had the Fiero only Paul and Ron ever had any contact with him.  He never responded to my calls to him or emails through the club email.  Even the organization that we worked through to find and donate to him said they had lost contact with him while he had the car. 

I think that our endeavor helped him to get on his feet.

[GTRS Fiero]

Well, I hope so.