For awhile I've been looking for a local buyer to sell e-scrap that is not worth shipping such as power supplies, floppies, AC adapters etc. Found out about the Columbia, MD location of ARCOA and decided to pay them a visit. Exchanged several emails with Todd, who has been very helpful and responded quickly to my emails throught the whole transaction.

I had to prepare my load by providing Todd with estimated weights of all the different types of scrap I was planning to deliver. This was mostly OK except for weighing about 500lbs worth or desktop power supplies. Since I have a minivan and all the PSs were "loose" in large trash cans, I did not want to weigh each and every one of them as I was throwing them into the back of my minivan. So I weighed a few, got an average of 3lbs per PS (with wires cut off) and estimated the total weight by counting them as I was loading them. I don't have to do this before I take my "regular" scrap (copper, alum, cans, wires etc) to a local yard, but I am OK with doing it for ARCOA especially because the estimated weight ended up being fairly close to actual weight.

Finally drove to their location in Columbia which is an office/dock/warehouse of their sister company that deals with copiers. Met Jill who works there and who was expecting me.

One thing I realized when I arrived, which was another thing that was different from my "regular" scrap yard, was that they were a bit short of boxes which I could unload my stuff into. The reason is that they usually deal with sellers that bring them gayloards worth of stuff, so they don't need to worry about providing carts, boxes etc. My load was small (about $800 total) and I had some of the stuff in plastic crates that I wanted to keep. We ended up finding enough cardboard boxes for smaller stuff and just stacked all of the PSs on a pallet. In future, I need to remember to bring my loads in cardboard boxes that I would be willing to leave there.



Jill weighed everything on their certified scale and it came up very close to estimated weights I got at home. She also took pictures of various stuff and gave me a copy of the final inventory list and I left.

Todd told me that I should expect a check within 12-15 days. On the 12th day I emailed Todd since I received nothing. He told me his boss who was issuing checks was very busy but that he would remind him about it. Long story short, I got the check on the 16th day.

Overall, I would give this buyer a high rating and I am planning to do more business with them, at least on the stuff I can't ship. My only real complaint is that I think they need to streamline their payment processing so that sellers like me could expect a payment within certain number of days without having to send them reminders, regardless of how busy they are.