White, John

The question that stops most cross-border resale conversations about Europe is simple and rarely answered precisely: when does a used device count as being placed on the market, and who carries the obligations at that moment? The answer does not turn on whether the device is new, but on what has been done to it […]

Payment protection exists because the two sides of an equipment transaction have to do different things at different times. The buyer wants the equipment to arrive and be as described; the seller wants to be paid. A payment arrangement that resolves this without either party having to move first is the purpose of an escrow

The most expensive used equipment purchase is the one that works perfectly on delivery and cannot be maintained two years later. Parts availability is not a maintenance consideration that belongs to the biomedical department after purchase; it is a valuation input that determines what the device is worth and how long it will remain useful.

The support model decision is usually made by default. A department that has always used a manufacturer’s service organisation continues to, and a department that has built a workshop continues to use it, and neither re-examines the choice because the equipment keeps working. The consequence appears when the equipment mix changes, when costs rise, or

Single-use items appear in equipment listings for a simple reason: they are often supplied with a system as part of a set, and their status is rarely described with the precision the position requires. A listing that includes probes, trocars, oxygenator membranes or sterile sets alongside a device is presenting the buyer with a question

The receiving inspection is the last moment at which the buyer has leverage, and it is routinely compressed into the twenty minutes the courier is willing to wait. Signing a delivery note before inspecting converts a condition dispute into a conversation the buyer is likely to lose, because the burden of showing what happened shifts

Two documents arrive with used equipment more often than any others, and they are routinely treated as interchangeable. One says the unit was calibrated. The other says the unit was verified. A buyer reads either as evidence that the equipment works, and a biomedical department that inherits the file discovers that neither document answers the

Condition grades are convenient and mostly uninformative. A device described as excellent tells a buyer what the seller felt about it, not what it is, and the buyer has no way to test the description against anything. The problem is not that sellers are dishonest; it is that a grade compresses a set of observations

A used device is not fully described by its hardware, and the gap between the two is where buyers most often lose value. Software and firmware determine what the device does, what it can connect to, which features are available and whether it can be updated. A unit with identical hardware to another can be

Warranty is one of the least standardised terms in the pre-owned equipment market and one of the most heavily relied on. Two sellers can both describe a ninety-day warranty and mean entirely different things: one covering parts and labour against a defined list of failures, another covering parts only, a third covering nothing unless the