Green Century Recycling — Local services in Portland

Disclaimer: I have nothing personal against Chris or Green Century, we actually have mutual friends, so writing this post is a last resort.

I purchased a refurbished macbook pro (which a mutual friend picked up from Chris and shipped to me) and two refurbished ipad minis (which Chris shipped). I gave Chris my gallery's address in Brooklyn, NY and asked him to send me a tracking number as delivery can be a "thing". A day or two after placing my order I emailed again asking for a tracking number so I could stay on top of the delivery. I didn't recieve a response and so I emailed again! Still no response and the package was to land any day, given the number of days since my purchase. I finally recieved a response and tracked the package. The items had been "delivered" but they weren't in the mail area of my building and there weren't any notes from the postal service (typical and the reason I was proactive in getting a tracking number). Long story short, I received my package nearly a month later, intact. This issue was ultimately the better part of my experience...

The Macbook Pro that I purchased failed shortly after recieving it. I use the computer for design projects on the Adobe Suite and keep all of my files on hard drives so as not to bog doen the machine. I emailed Chris and got no response. I emailed again and he simply asked "what are you wanting from me"? I explained the issue and Chris agreed to take a look at it. I sent the machine back to him and he emailed saying that the machine had run smoothly for some number of hours and that the hard drive was just full (I don't keep anything on my hard drive - I only save to my externals). I thought that was weird, but was relieved and happy. I offered to cover the shipping back here to NYC.

I recieved the computer a week or so later. When I turned it on, it immediately went into the same reboot loop, with a "no smoking" looking symbol on the opening screen. The exact thing it was doing when I sent it back to Chris. I've emailed Chris and have received no response. Thouroughly dissapointed and feel cheated. I'd like a refund for my purchase and it seems that the only way might be taking the issue up with my...

2024: Well, it's NINE YEARS later since I wrote this review, and I just wanted to add that Green Century now accepts STYROFOAM IN ALL ITS FORMS!! It is practically impossible to find a recycling company that will accept all styrofoam, including those pesky peanuts! The worst part about buying a computer or television is the huge chunks of styrofoam that no one wants to take. Even if you were a jerk and put it in your trash can, it would fill the whole thing up 6 days before the garbage truck is scheduled to come back again. SO, now you know: Green Century Electronics takes STYROFOAM!! They also take every kind of electronic recycling known to mankind :)

2015: Our medium sized downtown Portland business office had an urgent need to recycle a rather large amount of electronics - tapes, cds, hard drives, desk towers, monitors, old phones, etc. We got an immediate response from Green Century, and they were able to resolve the situation in a manner that was beyond our expectations. The director of services, Communications Specialist Heather Graham, was calm and collected as she proceeded to contact the driver and reschedule their entire day to accommodate our needs. Our order was cataloged, processed, and removed from the premises with such speed and professionalism - cannot say enough good things about this company's services!! Very...

They were very nice there, but ever since I dropped off a desktop computer there, I get daily attempts to access my Microsoft account. I have no payments or software downloads connected to it, and there's no cloud storage or anything, but I would never use that account again. And the emails (before I filtered them) were annoying. And it keeps happening, even though I disconnected the account from all computers. So, that's problematic for me. It never happened before I took my device there. I thought I'd wiped it well enough, but I guess not.

I signed into my account just to show the latest activity in the attached screenshot. Again, this never happened (other than my own sign-ins) before I took my computer here. So, if you do go, super-wipe the computer. And consider keeping the hard drive, maybe.

EDIT: I appreciate the response, as it may help others. I'm literally a software engineer, so I understand that my Microsoft account remains secure. And I can only tell you that there were no attempts prior to dropping off my desktop computer, and there have been multiple daily attempts within 72 hours of dropping it off.

Everyone's information has been part of multiple data breaches, so fortunately, no one can prove that this business is at fault. My advice to be very careful to wipe the hard drive--and maybe just...