Prices, When you just can't use street index... Options

[Die blaue Reiter...]

I was wondering how much you'd charge for, say, a corporate mage who wants a private hermetic library or a corporate decker who wants to buy his deck before retiring. Of course, I assume the corporation will give them whatever they need to do their job, but they probably expect them to give it back ( which is troublesome for magical gear that require karma bonding or cyberware ) when they won't need it anymore. Not so surprinsingly, they might want it for good....

Of course they won't have to pay the street index. In addition to that, the corporations pay a lot less than the listed prices for just about anything. So, how much would the corporation ask them to pay ? I'd like to know how much rebate ( or not ) you'd allow in general, not just in this particular case.

[ShadowPhoenix]

I think that most things that a corporation owns but would be willing to sell to the employee would depend on a few things.

1. Depreciation - depending on how new the product they are trying to get back from the company depends on how much that item has depreciated, this would be a GM call as to how long the Deck or Library had been in service with the company. Usually a company would only release the item for resale once it had completely depreciated, meaning the company devalues it and is about to upgrade their systems.
2. Rating - depending on how quality the item is, the company may not be willing to part with it, since most companies do not replace things that have worked for a long time(think about the Y2K issues and how long they let that go before updating) so if they're trying to buy their Excalibur from the Corp they used to work for, Good Luck.
3. What the deposition of the termination was - how did they leave the company? if on good terms, then certainly allowable for the employee to purchase his tools back from the company.
4. Pricing - I'd probably offer no more than a 20-30% discount, unless the equipment is OLD(read: low rating) then it may be as much as 50-75%, however the company will try to get as much of their investment back as possible, so really high discounts are improbable except where they could not sell it to a refurbishing house to upgrade and make more valuable.


those are the guidelines I'd use for offering any discounts and purchases from old places of business.

[krishcane]

This is not exactly the situation you are discussing, but related... I work at one of the top few companies that makes routers and switches, so that's a reasonable analog to one of the big Matrix megacorps in SR. We have a employee purchase policy if for some reason an employee wants to buy some of our products (I say it that way because we don't make a lot of home-use stuff...) You get a 60% discount from list price, with a cap of $5000 of gear (after discount) per year. Sales tax not included.

By contrast, internal price charged to a department for lab equipment or other working gear is 15% of list price. That basically what the company calculates as the average raw cost of production. That figure rolls up amortized R&D, projected average support costs, and of course manufacturing price.

Our partners, who we sell to at wholesale discount (and then they re-sell to the public) get a discount anywhere from 10% to 60% off list price, depending on the business arrangement. Our prices are the same globally (subject to your discount category) in order to prevent our global customers from simply buying product in the cheapest venue.

Lastly, we have some reciprocity agreements with other "megacorps", so we as employees can get 10% to 20% off of certain other products that we don't make (cars, clothes, chocolate). Those agreements vary significantly by company, and of course, it's only with one company in a given field. For example, Nissan might work a deal with us, but only if we agree NOT to set up a similar deal with any other car manufacturers.

Those figures might give you some guidelines to work with.

One other thing.... gear that is so far behind SOTA as to be unsellable, or gear that has been heavily used at work and is now ready for the junkbin, has been known to disappear and managers turn a blind eye. Technically, it's against company policy -- that stuff is supposed to be thrown away for tax reasons, but people take small stuff home on occasion. The stuff that goes home this way usually had a list price even in its SOTA heydey of well under $10,000, and is worth well under $1000 by the time we're throwing it out. If it ever actually turned up on Ebay, there'd be hell to pay. It's just personal use stuff that goes home with folks.

--K

[krishcane]

Additional detail:

Gear purchased through our employee purchase program may not be sold for 3 years or given away for 1 year, to ensure the SOTA totally devalues your purchase before you could try to make money on it. :)

--K

[Method]

if you're talking about a starting runner character who used to be a corp mage/decker, you don't have to bother with it. its already built into character creation because you don't pay SI.

[spotlite]

Talking of starting characters and discounts (or not), would you apply local cost multipliers from the relevant sourcebooks if a character's background said they were from somewhere specific? E.g. If someone came from New Orleans, would they pay list price x 80% for magical gear if they wanted to buy it?

Note - I know this isn't canon, I'm asking for opinions on the merit of such an idea! :D

[BitBasher]

Also for a decker, his corporate deck is functionally useless for a shadlwunner because it does not have masking, and IIRC it cannot be added.

[Large Mike]

I'm sure *anything* can be added to a deck with enough patience, know-how, and solder.

[BitBasher]

The catch is that cyberdecks are optical. No soldering possible :D

[Zazen]

Lucite solder of the future!

[RedmondLarry]

I once worked at a major corporation, and krishcane described their policies very well. The equipment the guys used at work are kept at work if they are valuable. Old gear has been known to be taken by the employee if it is old enough or worn enough that it would be discarded after the employee's departure. There is no process for an employee to purchase used gear -- instead it goes to an auction company if no one within the company needs it. Employees HAVE gone to the auction company and offered them deals.

If your question is related to starting gear for a new character, just charge his Resources the list price shown in the book.