[BC] Saved from the dumpster!

[Chris Gebhardt]

DANA PUOPOLO wrote:
> When I cleaned out my garage at my ex's house in SE Mass a few years ago, I
> threw out a 30 cubic yard dumpster of stuff (those big construction type
> dumsters). Not one person of the fifty or so I called showed up to take
> anything.

An amazing phenomenon: sometimes when you offer items for free, they 
generate little to no interest.  When you attach a price to those same 
items, suddenly you generate interest.  Witness ebay - one man's trash 
being another man's treasure.  Now an item that you literally could not 
give away may even spark a bidding war.

We have noticed this very thing with obsolete equipment that we couldn't 
get anybody to pick up.

Somewhat related, we used to sell some of our services extremely cheap 
and could not figure out why nobody was buying.  We raised prices on 
certain services by about 20% and the phones began to ring.

The lesson we have learned is that if you give something little or no 
value, it is perceived as having little or no value.

That said.... at one of our datacenters we share a floor with an 
extremely large multi-national law firm.  You wouldn't believe the 
computer equipment that hits the dumpster.  At one point I saw half a 
dozen or more 24" Trinitron monitors tossed in there.  I couldn't resist 
plugging a couple in... yup - they worked.  And they looked about brand 
new.   Makes one wonder.

Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
chris at virtbiz.com | (866) 4-VIRTBIZ