One of the things I do for a living is manage an Information and Referral line for people with disabilities. We have a number of pages with this website and perhaps the most valuable, in my estimation, is the Salesbank: a place where people, who have used equipment, can list the product for sale, trade or donation. This seems like a great website and program until one realizes that the people are left after the person with a disability dies try to get as much money as possible from the equipment left behind. What happen they list a power wheelchair for (usually) thousands of dollars and no one can afford the product. This issue is complicated by the fact that durable medical vendors-folks who sell this equipment refuse the take anything back once the product has been sold. I know of numerous accounts when the product was ordered for someone who was on life support and died before the item got to them leaving the family with new equipment, which must be sold as used. So the family cuts the price in half so the family is now offering the equipment for 2,000–3,000 dollars still keeping the item way out of reach of the common person or family let alone one which is experiencing disability. I envision the item will sit in the garage of the basement for a couple of years and eventually be sent the way of the local salvation army pick-up or worse, the dump.
Today I have had two calls for power wheelchairs from people with disabilities with little or no funding needing to get some form of mobility preferably sooner then later. Common people most of this equipment was purchased with second party payer money—their insurance or some government program bought the equipment. Let it go- gramps would have wanted it that way!!
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