I'm glad we now have a clear picture of the situation - and I, for one, can completely understand the protective attitude of a reputation. I recently acquired a HP5381A - a basic 80MHz frequency counter - which wasn't working and that reputation is the single greatest motivation for me to fix it (if I can get the parts).
I'm advocating internally to work on gear replacement strategies instead of buyback strategies, but legal is a funny world.
Replacement strategies are a lot more likely to support a positive PR response (which I'm sure you already know, Daniel) - even for someone like Mrt12 who seems to be making a lot of pessimistic assumptions. There is a lot of passion for HPAK gear because of that very reputation they are trying to protect.
Please tell the legal department that, for the limited scope of equipment involved in this one-off situation, the cost factor would not represent any sort of trade-off benefit and replacement would produce, by far, the better PR outcome - and that any legal considerations be resolved in support of that.
If they are worried about setting a precedent, then I would simply take this situation, including the overall cost of rectification and use it in future contracts and/or disposal agreements to reinforce the potential impact for such a service if they do not perform.
Seems a lot of effort to get rid of some possibly substandard equipment in the used market, howver I suspect the bill for all this, whatever it comes to, may end up with the company that were supposed to destroy the equipment.
I would agree. After all, it was this company's error that gave rise to the situation. I have no qualms about billing them $3k for a replacement spectrum analyser that they got $300 by selling the old one.