Frustrated with 4400's

[Phoenix32]

Okay, I admit it, I am frustrated and maybe a little tiny bit aggrivated.

About what? Well, with the whole eBay Snap Server 4400 thing. It is frustrating to have people day in and day out make offers that are less than the cost of the hard disks alone, much less the memory, OS update, and the unit itself (or my work involved). It can drive a person a little nuts.

How is this your problem? Well, it's not, I just needed to vent that out in public. So back to what I was really going to post about.

I am tired of the Snap 4400 thing and I am bailing out of it. Here is your chance to grab a nice one with all the goodies for dirt cheap (3 days, no reserve). I am only posting it here so that people in this community get a crack at the last of these I plan on doing.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Quantum-Snap-Ser...QQcmdZViewItem

[Terry Kennedy]

Originally Posted by Phoenix32

About what? Well, with the whole eBay Snap Server 4400 thing. It is frustrating to have people day in and day out make offers that are less than the cost of the hard disks alone, much less the memory, OS update, and the unit itself (or my work involved). It can drive a person a little nuts.

I sympathize. I had a large number of Snap 4100's (about two dozen) which I had removed from service. I thoroughly checked each one out, making sure they all had 4 120GB drives (matched firmware), 256MB RAM, quiet fans, rackmount ears, power cord, network cable, software CD and manual, etc. I formatted each of them and loaded the latest OS, JVM, and S2S on them and listed them on eBay with a 90-day money-back or replacement warranty (buyer's choice).

You wouldn't believe the amount of "I can get this other one [which has no drives, no ears, and no warranty] for $300 less than the one you're selling - wanna knock that off the price so we can make a deal?"-type emails I got.

I eventually did move around a dozen of them, but gave up on the rest and they're still sitting, boxed up, in my business partner's basement. At this point they're not worth much as SnapOS is effectively a dead product.

[Phoenix32]

Yup... I was getting offers like $350 for a 4400 with 4 x Seagate 500 GB drives (new) and 2 GB of Reg ECC memory. heh, the ram cost $90 and that is $400+ worth of hard drives. I was not pleased. People want them, but they want you to pay for them... Oh well, enough bitching from me. My main purpose was to let people here in on my 4400 closeout sale.

[z0ner]

Originally Posted by Phoenix32

Yup... I was getting offers like $350 for a 4400 with 4 x Seagate 500 GB drives (new) and 2 GB of Reg ECC memory. heh, the ram cost $90 and that is $400+ worth of hard drives. I was not pleased. People want them, but they want you to pay for them... Oh well, enough bitching from me. My main purpose was to let people here in on my 4400 closeout sale.

Not to mention getting the latest Guardian OS on there. These things should sing off Ebay.

[MaddMatt]

Your 4400 is still on less than $180 with 15 hrs to go!
I couldn't do it Andy, I hope it goes up real fast at the end for you...!


As a sales guy I have been exposed to this many times over...

Back in 1989 when the snap came out I used to get "why would I buy a server that didn't have a monitor or a keyboard?" or "8GB! do you have anything smaller?" (even though a decent new server at the time cost upwards of $10k, and had half the disk space and the Meridian Data 8GB Snap Cost $4k, slightly slower processor but twice the HDD space)

5 years back when USB HDD's became easily available... I would take a call from a "Reseller" with "how much for a Snap2200 320GB" my reply AUD $1698ex RRP $2154.... The reply was "I can get a 200GB USB HDD for $420 from XXXXX.... I would ask "don't you need this on the network?" and the reply "I can share it from one of the workstations!" my reply "I'm glad I won't be the bunny on that workstation dude... enjoy your USB Drive!"

Even a few years ago when SATA drives were really new I would get the same thing on a snap4500 640GB inquiry... I tell tell them the price and get in reply "I can buy a XXX workstation and put 4x 160G HDD's in it for half that"... (I would think I hope those XXX cheapskates have more than 2x IDE ports in that sucker, if not your going to have a hard time getting the OS on that puppy!)

So I don't even try to explain these days, if they don't understand NAS i.e. how to make more time for themselves to make more money elsewhere, well... they are not worth my efforts... on that point - If they have all day to ring up scumbag sales guys like me to argue about prices I wouldn't expect them to be around to long enough to assist me with my monthly budget on a continual basis anyway...


The only guys who have an excuse are the Service provider guys who supply decent self built NAS system, load WSS (that the client pays for too) so they can then charge the client "to billy-O" to manage each of them on a monthly basis - That's called; sweet talking them into making your own private market...


Talk about ebay; This one is a little strange;

http://cgi.ebay.com/320-GB-Snap-Serv...QQcmdZViewItem

It is a 4100 that looks suspiciously like a 4000...?

[Phoenix32]

Matt, in a lot of cases though, they are not even offering the prices of the hard disks. I am sure this one will go higher than it is at the very end, a lot higher probably, but who knows. And I bet not for what it is worth.

I do get really great prices sometimes, but then other times I get jacked. It all balances out to an average for the most part. I don't reveal my prices often, but to give an example back for you, let's try this very server I have listed.

Snap 4400 - $275 after shipping etc.
4 x Seagate 400GB drives - $280
1 GB stick of Reg ECC Memory - $45
eBay selling fees and PayPal fee - Aprox $50 when done

Thats $650. Before, I had a starting price of $777 (buy-it-now of $877), and I usually end up paying about $15 more for the shipping than I charge them, counting in the shipping supplies etc. So in the end, I would make from between $117 to $217.

HOLY CRAP Phoenix! $117 to $217 profit, you charge way too much.

Now, lets take an average of 8 to 10 hours of my time going through each unit 100% running diagnostics and testing it top to bottom. And this DOES NOT count the many hours it takes testing the memory and the hard disks (another 20 hours or so). I have to monitor and babysit those tests as well as swap stuff in and out, but mostly the computer does that work, so I didn't count it. However, in the end, I have around 10 to 12 hours of my actual work time invested in each unit. Oh yeah, and let's not forget I give a 30 day warranty, so my butt is on the line with each unit for 30 days. Suddenly that $117 to $217 is sounding pretty cheap, and it is by far most of the time closer to the $117 than to the $217.

Oh yeah, and this also does not count any parts that need replaced (which are hard to find) when some things test out bad and require parts and more of my time.

No, I can't possibly understand why I might get that deer-in-the-headlights look on my face when my best offers for the unit are $300 to $400.

I could be wrong Matt, but I would guess that by the end of the auction, I will have lost money, not counting my time. It will probably go for less than I have invested in it. I hope I am wrong, but we shall see.

My profit is even a little smaller on the 4500's, but at least the business/corp buyers don't give me a hard time or give me unrealistic offers. People might get mad at me here for saying this, but now I am starting to see why Adaptec discourages home end-users and wants to drive them away and stick with the corp users.

Now here is the part that really sucks Matt. When I quit doing these, there will be more of the cheaper units available and most of them not in great shape and with various problems. Then the real crying will begin. "I bought such and such on eBay from so and so and it doesn't work right. Can you help me get it running?" And if it is beyond the simple do this and do that which we try to post here on the forum, they come to me asking how much to fix it and get upset when I tell them I get more than 25 cents and hour. For me, being a professional hardware dude, it seems I end up having to work on it or repair it (by proxy) one way or the other. I think this partially explains why I don't get involved much in the Snap 4100/4000 stuff anymore.

We shall see Matt, we shall see. But I bet I eat it.

[Phoenix32]

Told you Matt. It went for $510, $10 of which will have to go into the shipping. So I lost $150 and a lot of work time on a fully upgraded Snap 4400. Sad, aint it? But this is why I am going to dump the 4400's and not do anything with them anymore (not even here). 4200/4500 or nothing. Different user base.

[MaddMatt]

I hope the buyer knows he did well!

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by MaddMatt

I hope the buyer knows he did well!

What? Are you kidding? He has not even paid me yet.

It's all good though. It is the last of the 4400 stuff for me.

[MaddMatt]

I hope he doesn't make it any harder for you to part with it!

[Phoenix32]

LOL, That price and a Non Paying Bidder.

Oh well, it goes right back up today (for 24 hous) on eBay...


Some people....

[MaddMatt]

that is unbelievable...

do you get a list of the other bidders or eBay notify them on your behalf?

I have found if I still have a sold item in my "watched items" it will actually note it as saying "re-listed item" if the buyer backs out or it does not proceed as a sale for any reason...

[Phoenix32]

Yes, I sold it to the third highest bidder...

I also sold the others now.