A Buy-Back Program for your High Tech Gadget. Is it

A Buy-Back Program for your High Tech Gadget. Is it Worth It?

When it comes to taking action to make the electronics we use as environmentally friendly as possible, Best Buy must really be serious. Over the Super Bowl, their advertising blitz ranged from mega-sized newspaper ads to Super Bowl commercials with stars like Justin Bieber. Advertising what exactly, you ask? Advertising their plan to be the biggest greening influence in the high tech gadget business, of course. They want you to think of them when you feel it's time to take a step up from your existing TV, cell phone, home stereo or anything else.

Best Buy isn't going to be one of those drop-off services where they act like they are doing you a favor just by taking your old high tech gadget off your hands. That's the way the little companies, startups, used to do it. Now that the large electronics chains are taking an interest in the area, they will actually buy it from you. Best Buy actually has a rates list for what they will pay for your old gadgets. If you have ever heard of Square Trade (the company that provides online warrantees to customers at Amazon and Buy), the company has its own high-tech gadget buyback guarantee for Apple's products. That program is for people who want to stay on top of the technology curve. If you are afraid when you pay a premium to buy the latest in something today that it will be superseded in no time at all, this program gives you a little peace of mind. What you do is, when you buy something like an iPhone or an iPad, you pay Square Trade a fee of around $50 or $70 depending on the model of high-tech gadget you have. And then, six months later, Square Trade will take it off your hands and pay you half of what you paid for it to buy new. If Apple has a new iPhone or iPad coming out and you are not the kind that is happy being stuck with a device that is a product cycle too old, this is a plan that should make you happy.

These buyback programs aren't as generous as these companies wpuld have you believe though. To begin with, you don't get cash - you only get store credit. And on top of that, you only get half your money back, minus that hefty upfront fee. It could work for some people, but the plan is hardly the bargain for everyone that stores make it out to be. It hardly seems fair that they should calculate the depreciation of a new high-tech gadget at 50% in the first six months. 50% seems to be the number that all these companies - Best Buy, Tech Forward, or any other buyback service, seem to offer. If you were to advertise your six-month-old high-tech gadget on Craigslist, you would probably get back 75% of what you paid for it. If you sold a six-month old laptop on the market, you would probably get back 60% of what you paid for it. But that's only if those products aren't rendered obsolete by a more recent product release. If six months after you buy your iPad, should Apple choose to release version 2 of the device, it certainly would erode the value of your six-month-old iPad considerably. And then of course, you would need to allow for how high-tech electronic devices just get cheaper over time.

Even so, if you were to sell your latest iPhone4 with 16 GB onboard after six months with no iPhone5 i nsight, you could certainly make far more than the $350 that Best Buy offers you. But you do have to take in account that if you sold it on Craigslist or EBay yourself, that you would have to take a lot of time posting it and then taking care of that post, attending to calls from people. Outsource the project to a buyback program, and you save a lot of time. This certainly is a lucrative business niche; RadioShack, Target and just about everyone else is getting on it.

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