Acquired Meraki Equipment

[Bwhit33]

I just acquired a small chain of previously owned/partially abandoned restaurants. While I really care about the kitchen equipment and the bones of the buildings, they left behind a bit of networking equipment. I have 3x MX64, 1x z3, and 4x MR42 (as well as a slew of Unifi AC Pro and AC Mesh) I assume it was part of their point of sale, but they didn’t leave any of that behind.

is there a refurbishment program I can sell these back to Cisco? Or can I reset them and use them as my own, assuming the previous owner/POS company still has them on their controller - and no real likelihood of transferring?

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

No.  They would have to be released by the prior owners to be re-usable.

More than likely, these are only good for landfill.

[Bwhit33]

Seems like an extraordinarily wasteful flaw. Thank you.

[Silentshooter]

Welcome to what makes Meraki completely suck..  Even if they were unclaimed, the owner can still report them lost, stolen, etc etc.. and have them removed from your dashboard months or years later and Meraki does not care.  

It will be the downfall of Meraki in the long-term.  Thankfully the new Hybrid Cisco/Meraki hardware that can work cloud or premise at least allows you to still use the hardware outside of the cloud for used equipment without the risk of it being disabled on you.  

[Bwhit33]

Yeah... for the Unifi I just reset and claim on my controller. I can see both sides to the coin, I guess...but making it a brick for someone who stole it doesn't really help me needing another one.

[Silentshooter]

Reality is it has nothing to do with theft.  Plenty of companies brick devices when you prove it was stolen with a police report or the like.  Meraki on the other hand just bricks it with out any proof or requirements, they are in it for the money.  One less device that can be used means one more they can sell to replace it.  Complete scumbags in how they run things.