atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Inter-Tel Telephones & Systems What's our system worth?

I have a slightly smaller, but similar system collecting dust after a 5000 upgrade. We have a six figure investment, but I've been given low three figure numbers to purchase the entire thing. Does anyone have better ideas to sell?

This system is worthless except to a reseller or a tech who knows how to set it up. Even then it is only good for parts. No one is going to use this for an original installation. It has no value to an end user.

That is an interesting comment.

I have a specific party who wishes to trade for that system. That party wants to use it for the exact same purposes as I have done. They are interested because this way they don't enter into a lease agreement for a new and rapidly depreciating system. The one catch is that they will want to expand the system by about 50% over the next 1-2 years using refurbished equipment. This includes cabinets, PRI cards, IPRC cards and handsets. No licensing except for additional endpoint licenses for the handsets.

What is the problem with this plan?

I am sure you can transfer the license to the other party. There is a lot of Axxess equipment on the secondary market. They should expand w/ digital phones. It would be a lot cheaper.

Butch Cassidy's comment is consistent with traditional dealers who have no foresight on how to sell outside the box.

A phone system is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Here's a pricing example. I have a old Spirit system in the warehouse. The cabinet is worthless, the phones about $5 each to a refurbisher. To an end user, the cabinet becomes worth a lot more and the phones about $50 each. It's all relative.

When a system is first discontinued, the value plummets, but as it becomes scarcer, the value goes up. Check out a Mitel SX-50 console or powers supplies. Or that piece of toast on eBay that looks like someone :-)

Carl

dhostetter,
What it comes down to is you will get what you can out of it, the best thing to do is call around to different used equipment sellers and find a high /low that you can use to set your price and go from there.
Just because one person says it's worthless and another tells you it's valuable goes to show you how big a rang there is, then the other side is that the party interested in it is probably going to look around also for prices.

It's like anything else, once you kick the tires and drive it off the lott the prices drops by half and then depreciates as time goes on.

dfleschute and dhostetter PM me for some numbers.

I filled half a dumpster with Axxess hardware last weekend. I tend to agree with Butch.

To an end user the system only has value if customer can count on someone to install and support it locally.

Just selling it outright in boxes would not get a great result. Two years ago when the Axxess was more viable, a company here locally that was going under sold a similar sized system for the price previously mentioned here. The kicker was the system was less than a year old and they paid a king's ransom for it.

To the OP, the system is worth a lot more if it is in, working and stable. If the lease company is greedy and wants 40% original value or some nonsense than it is time to dump it and move on to a new system.

If there is a low-dollar buyout, then I'd keep it.

The highest dollar item of the lot are the CPU/server and the associated licensing that could be legally transferred if the OP was the one who signed off on the Inter-tel licensing.

There is substantial value to a large firm that would want a spare parts/crash kit.

When I say an obsolete used phone system is worth nothing to an end user, I am referring to the non-technical small busines owner or corporocrat. There are a lot of web-based resellers unloading this crap on unsuspecting end users. Then these pennypinching moguls call up their local dealers and phone technicians thinking they can get the whole system installed and programmed for a couple of hundred.

The only person who can use an obsolete used phone system is one who knows something about it.