A client of ours – a 5 Star hotel in London Kensington – recently purchased some new IT storage for his servers.  He asked his IT supplier if the SAN was definitely New and was assured it was.  Once the SAN arrived the IT Manager asked us to install and configure it.  When our engineer arrived on-site he thought it odd the SAN was already pre-built as this is never usually the case. It had the drives already populated and the side ‘ears’ already attached (these are usually left off during shipping so they don’t get damaged).

When we went to configure it we saw it had in fact been used previously!

It’s reprehensible some IT Suppliers try to sell used goods as new, just to make a bigger profit.  The cost to my customer isn’t just his wasted time and the hassle of now having to return it back to his suppler; but he is also having to pay again for us to come back a second time to install and configure the replacement.