The honest answer is that it depends almost entirely on whether your equipment is worth anything — and that most businesses asking this question will pay nothing. Here is how the economics actually work, including the parts suppliers tend not to volunteer.
A reputable ITAD provider makes money in two ways: refurbishing and reselling equipment that still has value, and recovering materials from equipment that does not. When a collection contains enough working, resaleable hardware, that recovered value covers the cost of collection, data destruction and processing. The provider does not need to charge you.
This is why you will see "free collection" advertised widely. It is genuine — but it is conditional, and the condition is that your equipment has recoverable value.
Charges are normal and reasonable in these situations:
A laptop still enrolled in Intune, Entra ID, Jamf, Apple Business Manager or iCloud cannot be resold, because the next owner cannot activate it. A locked device is worth nothing on the secondary market regardless of its specification — a nearly-new locked MacBook has the resale value of a brick.
Most providers charge for these. We charge £25 per locked device. What matters is when you find out: we send you the list of affected devices before any charge applies, so you have the chance to release them. A supplier who tells you after the fact has removed your ability to do anything about it.
Ask this before you sign anything: "What happens if some devices turn out to be locked, and will you tell me before you charge me?" The answer tells you a lot about how the rest of the relationship will go.
Comparing IT disposal on price alone is how organisations end up with an ICO problem. The cost of a collection is trivial next to the cost of a data breach traced back to a disposed asset. What actually varies between quotes:
If you are retiring a batch of ten or more identical, relatively recent laptops in working order, you should not be paying anything — you should be receiving a payment. Large batches of uniform hardware are exactly what the secondary market wants.
The same goes for enterprise server and storage hardware, professional workstations with discrete GPUs, and networking equipment. See our technology buyback page for how valuations work.
Value falls fast. Business hardware depreciates steeply, and the drop accelerates once a model leaves mainstream support. Equipment sitting in a store room "until we get round to it" is losing money every month. If a refresh is coming, get the valuation while the kit is still current rather than eighteen months later.
For a typical office retiring laptops, desktops, monitors and networking equipment of reasonable age: expect free collection, free standard data destruction, and documentation included. For a clear-out of genuinely dead equipment: expect a quote, and expect it to be based on volume and equipment type. For a large batch of good hardware: expect an offer.
Any supplier unwilling to tell you which of those three you are before turning up is worth being cautious about.
Call us and ask. We would rather give you a straight answer than a brochure — even if the answer is that you do not need us.
Call 01422 416821 →What the law actually requires when business IT leaves your building, and how to check a supplier is licensed.
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