Never Accept First Trade-in Price

Let's take a closer look at that third point. Switches, routers and other network devices are almost always deployed with a variety of options installed - extra features, modules and software functionality, for example.

When you ask your manufacturer for a trade-in value for your redundant devices, the chances are, planning on feeding those devices back into their refurbishment programme, that they will offer you a price based on their base configurations. No options, no additional modules and no extra software functionality. 

Additionally, handling your old kit, refurbishing it and selling it on is a headache for the manufacturer. Their core business and chief objective is to sell their current lines, not to resell old equipment.

Really, they'd rather you simply disposed of your redundant equipment than traded it in. On top of all that, any offer they make you for it will come straight off their bottom line: it's likely to be grudging at best. 

Now, consider the dealer who needs your old equipment to fulfil a customer order. The scenario is turned  on its head: without your kit that dealer may not have a bottom line on that order at all. They have an active, pressing need for your equipment - you're in a seller's market, and can command a much higher price. 

There's a direct parallel to all this that most of us are familiar with. When buying a new car, accepting the dealer's trade-in offer on the old one is convenient, easy and simple, but we all know that we'll get much more for it by selling it privately.

Only by doing so can we make sure the value of all the options - that heated, massaging driver's seat, the iPod port, those parking sensors - is reflected in the price we get for it. 

So - especially in the current economic climate, with cost control a priority and used equipment prices on the rise as a result of fewer organisations upgrading - swim against the tide.

Never, ever accept the first trade-in price you're offered on your old networking kit. Always shop around. It could save you literally tens of thousands of pounds.