Home/How It Works
The process
From asset list to payment
Decommissioning is rarely the only thing on your plate. The process below is designed so that your side of it amounts to sending a list, granting access, and receiving paperwork.
Step 01
Send us what you’re retiring
An export from your CMDB, a spreadsheet, a purchase record from the original install, or photographs of the racks with the labels visible. Any of these is enough to work from.
The more detail we have, the tighter the valuation — but don’t hold off because the list is incomplete. We would rather see a rough inventory today than a perfect one in three weeks.
- Model numbers and quantities are the most useful starting point.
- Tell us if drives are still installed — it affects the sanitisation plan, not usually the price.
- Flag anything you already know is faulty. Honesty here speeds up the audit.
- We’ll sign your NDA first if the inventory is commercially sensitive.
Step 02
A written valuation, itemised
Within one working day you receive a written offer broken down by line, not a single lump figure with no workings.
Where the value depends on condition we can’t confirm from a list, the offer says so and states the assumption. If the audit later contradicts it, we come back to you with the revised figure and the evidence before anything is processed — and you can decline and have the goods returned at our cost.
- No obligation. Plenty of people use us for a benchmark figure and go elsewhere. That’s fine.
- Fixed for 14 days, so it survives an internal approval cycle.
- Net position stated where a load carries zero-value material, rather than hidden in the small print.
Step 03
We collect — free, insured, on your schedule
Data centre collections have rules: access requests, escort policies, goods lifts, loading bay slots, out-of-hours restrictions. We work to them rather than around them.
- Free across mainland UK on anything we’re purchasing, with no minimum load.
- De-rack and pack handled by our team if you’d rather not tie up your own engineers.
- Out-of-hours and weekend collections to fit change windows.
- DBS-checked staff, ID carried, paperwork completed before we leave site.
- Waste transfer note issued on the day, plus a signed manifest of what left the building.
- Sealed transit for loose drives — lockable totes, sealed and numbered.
Step 04
Audit, sanitise, certificate, pay
Everything from here happens at our Rochdale facility — and you get told about it, not left wondering.
Reconciled
Every unit checked against your manifest and asset register. Discrepancies raised with you the same day, not buried in a final report.
Sanitised
Drives logged by serial and erased to NIST 800-88, or destroyed where your policy requires. Failures escalate automatically to destruction.
Certificated
Certificates of erasure or destruction per drive, plus a consolidated audit report tying it all back to your original list.
Paid
BACS within three working days of audit sign-off. Self-billing invoice raised by us, or we’ll work to your PO process.
Awkward situations
The things that usually complicate a decommission
Leased or financed equipment
Tell us before collection. Kit still under a lease or asset finance agreement can’t simply be sold, and we won’t knowingly buy it. We can still sanitise the media and hand it back for return to the lessor.
Landlord hand-back deadlines
Suite hand-backs come with dilapidation clauses and a hard date. We’ll work to the deadline, including phased removal and full strip-out of racks, containment and cabling.
Live equipment still in service
Common in a phased migration. We schedule collections around the cutover so nothing leaves before the workload has moved, and can collect in several visits at no extra cost.
Nobody knows what’s in the rack
Also common, especially after a TUPE or an acquisition. We’ll do a site survey, produce the inventory ourselves, and give you a valuation from that.