Laptop users warned over buying sites’ valuations

Many laptop-buying companies are offering far below market value for old computers, according to a new Which? investigation.

Researchers at the consumer watchdog obtained quotes for a number of machines from various online companies and found that those wanting to get a good price for their old computers can recoup up to five times as much by selling them privately.

Investigators took five used laptops of varying ages and ran them through a selection of buying companies, then compared the offers with what the laptops had recently fetched on eBay.

One firm offered just £67 for a 2009 13in Apple MacBook that could have been sold on eBay for £350; while a Dell Studio 15 laptop, which would fetch between £151 and £215 on eBay, was given a price of only £55.

Meanwhile, an Acer Aspire 8920G featured in Which? tests in 2009 would have raised just £87 from one of the computer-buying websites, while equivalent models were sold through eBay for between £131 and £410, depending on their condition.

Which? computing editor Sarah Kidner said: “People should be aware that the amount offered by these companies is not always the final amount you receive.

“Selling an old laptop online can be an easy way to recoup some cash, but it pays to shop around and try online auction websites to find the best deal.”

Meanwhile, in a separate investigation, Which? tested computer repair services at two leading electrical companies and found they failed to fix a single laptop.

Researchers took three “broken” laptops and desktops to branches of PC World and Currys around the UK to test their newly revamped PC repair service, Knowhow.

Which? said its team had created a simple software error on the laptops relating to the hard drive and had similarly disconnected the desktop PC’s hard drive and DVD drives.

They found that the Know-how teams failed to repair a single laptop and only satisfactorily fixed two of the desktop PCs.