IBM quietly notified its US mainframe salesforce on September 6 that it would be remarketing used as well as new 3090, 308X and 4381 mainframes, 3380 disks and 3880 controllers. Effective immediately, salespeople can offer used equipment taken back off lease by IBM Credit Corp without going through the tiers of approvals that were hitherto required, and the switch is expected to have a major impact on the US used computer market. It is also being seen as a hostile move towards the third party computer brokers to whom IBM Credit traditionally sold used equipment, and may reflect the company’s dissatisfication that brokers typically offered IBM Credit prices little better than those offered to users. A further unfriendly aspect of the move is that IBM normally, as a courtesy, informs the US Computer Dealers & Leasers Association of such changes in policy, and on this occasion did not. Now that the CDLA does know about it, it has expressed its strong dissatisfaction to IBM, but points out that under the IBM’s 1956 anti-trust consent decree, its lawyers reckon that IBM is within the rules in reselling used equipment provided it has never conveyed title to it to a user or third party, or where it took it back either on a bona fide trade-in, or where money was owed it. For users, the new policy raises the question why buy new equipment from IBM if you can now buy cheaper used kit equally guaranteed by IBM?
