On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Ron Hudson wrote:
> The first time I went, It was great, I left off a fair ammount of
> good-but-old-and-unuseable by me stuff, and walked a way with a
> AppleIIc+, a great little machine - with
> all kinds of goodies.
>
> The second time it was like you said. I think some tax-type got ahold
> of them and told them that they were selling without withholding sales
> tax. They said the could
> only sell to someone who had a resale license. (but they could
> 'donate' the equipment to me if I 'donated' to the 'pizza fund') And I
> also got the 'scram ya bother us kid'
> feeling from them.
Ron, the first time was because you were there as my guest. And since I
had my collection stored there I was part of the team and was allowed
certain priveleges. All the stuff you walked away with was stuff that I
was entitled to let you take because it was vintage stuff (it would've
been scrapped anyway). And a lot of it you got for free (if not all of
it, I can't remember).
I don't remember about the second time but indeed, if people want to take
a small piece of miscellaneous hardware, it is customary to feed their
pizza fund jar. It is true that they cannot legally sell stuff without
the buyer having a valid resale license, otherwise they would have to
charge sales tax and keep everything above board because they are
obligated to. That is too much hassle for them.
It's not too much to ask for a non-profit organization that is
perpetually running at a deficit. And even then, you still have to be
accompanied by someone who has significant clout there. If you were
to walk in off the street they would boot you out the door very quickly,
and for good reason. If they didn't, they would have a constant stream of
all sorts of riffraff walking in there, making a mess, expecting help,
causing problems, getting hurt, raising their insurance, etc.
Look at it from the point of view of the ACCRC. Imagine that you are a
non-profit with very limited resources, just barely getting by in the
weakest economy in memory, sometimes behind on all sorts of bills, and
having to worry about keeping the business afloat. Now imagine having
over ten years of experiences to determine what does and does not work.
Maybe then you can understand why they would rather not deal with people
coming in off the street to buy stuff.
The ACCRC does have some stuff for the public to come in and utilize (a
free internet cafe for example) but in order to be priveleged enough to
become part of the crew there you must dedicate a LOT of your time to
helping them out.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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Received on Sun Aug 24 2003 - 11:50:00 BST