For yourself, it's totally an individual decision based on your personal priorities and risk calculus. I'm a bit skeptical about purchasing refurb computer equipment in general because the support window is ticking down but certainly I have nothing against used and refurb goods for the home in general.

For companies, there's a lot to be said for standardization though, for my last job, I just used my own phones and computer gear anyway so it was what I wanted and I controlled it (other than MDM latterly on the phone).

> Regrettably I don't know if they're compatible with Apple's MDM but I couldn't imagine why not

I doubt they'll ship you pre-MDMed devices from the refurb store, but you should still be able to add them to your account manually:

https://it-training.apple.com/tutorials/deployment/dm060/

That sounds high. The chair that I use in my WFH setup was around $800 new when I bought it at an office furniture liquidator for $75.

> That's 100% gross profit.

That's a typical margin for a reseller (and it's gross margin, not gross profit). Back in the 80s, I was horrified that the mail order houses demanded a wholesale price that was half of retail. But I learned that's how things work.

Businesses have a lot of expenses. People who start one often think if they buy X for $10, and sell it for $20, they're counting the money they'll make. The reality is you gotta pay for everything else before you can count the profit.

Running a business is very expensive. Pay the employees (movers), a huge truck, fuel, a huge warehouse, HVAC to keep it decent inside, more employees (sales and business), advertising and marketing. If you consider all those costs, it's not such a bad markup.

You can't ignore the costs associated with transporting the furniture, sorting, inspecting, cleaning and storing the furniture. Then you need to have sales staff, finance staff, etc to help with sales. A lot of office furniture is builky, so you're looking at high transportation costs since how many desks can you fit in a box truck?

I'd guess if it's a $1,000 item new, they buy at $100 and sell for $500 with $200-300 going towards operating costs and $100 of it to profit (so 20% of the price it's sold for).

Conversely, the demand for other people's home furnishings is pretty low. That's why estate sales are mostly held just to get rid of the stuff and not really to make any money.