Net Gain
+$993k
Above Original
+25%
Year
2025
Category
K-12 Education
"I feel like if it wasn’t for the TrustTrade group, we would have done a disservice...they were able to significantly increase what we were able to do, and that's more money that we were able to put back in the hands of the district so we can spend it in the classroom..."
When Dougherty County School System (Albany, GA) needed to retire a large fleet of student devices, TrustTrade ran a structured, competitive bid across leading national buyback vendors. Rather than accepting a single vendor's headline "best-case" number, TrustTrade normalized every offer to realistic, graded estimates and surfaced the terms that actually affect a district's bottom line — deductions, guarantees, payment timing, and logistics.
The school district had an expiring quote from a vendor and asked TrustTrade to take over the process, procure multiple bids, and support the district in building a realistic, real-world estimation of fleet value so that the district leadership and school board could make reasonable predictions for returns that would support a new district buy with Apple. The district was concerned that the previous agreement would not be honored, and also believed (rightly so) that they could get more through TrustTrade. Finally, the district also wanted to ensure that no deductions or other potential issues would allow vendors to lower the actual returns at the end of the process.
TrustTrade managed the full competitive bid process for DCSS end to end. We solicited offers from leading national buyback vendors, then normalized every quote to a realistic graded estimate so the district could compare true expected value rather than marketing ceilings. We flagged the terms that actually move the number — deduction schedules, guarantee floors, down-payment structure, packaging and haul-away responsibility, and payment timing — and presented them side by side in a single clear summary. TrustTrade also delivered the district's terms ahead of the process so that vendors had a clear understanding of the project and could provide reasonable estimates and term alignment.
The district was able to raise the quotes received by over ~$358,000 (25%) from the original expiring agreement. Beyond that, the district was able to procure a significant down payment, full white glove service, and waiving of all potential late-game deductions. Because of this, the final payout was well above, potentially ~$993,000, what the district would have likely received under the terms of the expiring agreement. In the end, the district ended up with ~$1,670,000 instead of a potential ~$680,000.
