Recycling Obsolete or Broken Electronics

My family has always felt extremely guilty about broken electronics. A DVD player dies and it ends up in our attic, because even though it is broken, it seems too wasteful to toss. So this morning I was quite excited to see Best Buy will now allow anyone to actually recycle some of the myriad disposable electronics everyone owns one or two of. (Or if you're related to me, you've got 5, yes 5, obsolete or broken printers hanging around your house that you eventually got fed up with and paid Staples to recycle.) I spent some of the morning reading their new policy and deciding what could be dropped off there, and what could be dropped off at Staples, who has had a recycling program for a few years now. What made the Best Buy deal seem better was they would charge you $10 for some electronics, (Mind you the ad clearly states MOST ITEMS ARE FREE to recycle) and after you pay your $10 they would give you a $10 gift card to Best Buy. Seems usable. At least that old DVD player would have some new life somewhere. We rolled a trip to Staples and a trip to Best Buy into one trip. Staples got 2 keyboards (which they say they will recycle free) and some cables. Went off without a hitch. They took them, and we turned in the last of our 10 ink cartridges for the month. Best Buy was a nightmare. I expect it was because the new store policy likely wasn't explained to people actually working in Customer Service. First they said we don't take DVD players. It says clearly in the ad "DVD Players to PCs". Then they said they charge $10 dollars per item and nothing is recycled for free. Also a lie. The direct line from the ad was "There is no charge for most products." If there's no charge for most products doesn't that mean something can be recycled for FREE. After a ridiculous wait we finally managed to get rid of one cheap DVD player that had worked for maybe 4 months (bought at Best Buy mind you) and one DVD-Rom. We were hoping to get rid of the PC that's been sitting on our porch for a year, but were informed that to accept a PC we would have to have the hard drive removed for a fee of 30 dollars. I'm impressed removing 4 screws costs $30, and on top of that is the $10 charge. (The hard drives need to be removed due to identity theft concerns. If anyone could get any useful information off a 7 year old corrupted and twice reformatted Windows 98 hard drive, I think the thieves deserve it.) And I'm not trying to knock Best Buy. Finally allowing people to recycle the disposable electronics we've been conditioned to buy every year is a great leap forward. However if you're going to do it please make sure at least your managers know what the heck is going on. We had to point out every word in their own circular repeatedly to get rid of two electronics devices, which were clearly stated as recyclable.