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Q.C. dumping old equipment in Web auction
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FOR SALE: Surplus office equipment from Queen Creek ranging from phones to computer monitors is being sold cheap as part of a year-round online auction. The next one is Tuesday and will feature computers.
Thomas Boggan, Tribune
Computers for $1. Vehicles for $200. Those prices may be far and few between, but it’s still possible to find some dirt-cheap swag during year-round online auctions for surplus equipment from the town of Queen Creek.
Town spokeswoman Marnie Schubert said officials recently started auctioning surplus equipment online through a Web site called PublicSurplus.com.
It’s sort of like eBay,” she said. “People just bid.”
The next one is on Nov. 10, and will feature computers.
“It’s also printers, monitors (and) old cell phones, so there’s a variety of equipment,” she said. “They’ll probably be staging it over the next two months, so it won’t all go out at the same time.”
Schubert said more municipalities and counties are opting to auction their surplus equipment over the Internet.
“Cities used to use big public auctions that (had) actual auctioneers and things like that, but with the Internet, it’s so much easier,” she said.
Instead of a one-day event in which the town auctions all its accumulated surplus at once, equipment is added to the Web site as it becomes available. Items are placed for sale when they outdated or no longer used to recoup costs.
“In terms of vehicles, it may be that a new vehicle has replaced it that has new technology on it that the town needs or something along those lines,” she said.
The final costs depends on the competition among bidders.
“It’s all depending on what the market wants to pay for it,” Schubert said.
She said bidding starts at a dollar for computer equipment.
“In terms of the vehicles, in some cases it’s just a couple hundred dollars that they’ve started (at),” she said.
PublicSurplus.com works like this: Bidders name a maximum amount of money they’re willing to pay for items, and the Web site places incremental bids on their behalf until the spending limit is reached.
“Your maximum amount is only visible to you,” the Web site says. Just like regular auction, the person with the highest bid wins.
Not everything is in perfect working order.
“Some people buy these computers just for parts because they are completely wiped, so there’s no software or operating system on them,” Schubert said. “In … the majority of cases, they do work, but in some cases they do not. But it will say they do not.”
The money goes back into the town’s general fund.
“It’s not beaucoup bucks. It’s a couple dollars, but it’s better than just throwing it away into a landfill,” Schubert said.
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