How to get rid of a TV and old electronics in Atlanta

The short answer

The visit minimum is $75, so a single TV on its own bills at $75. Most people combine — TV (42" to 65") $68 + entertainment center $96 = $164 is the single most common electronics job in this city.

Everything includes the carry from wherever it is and responsible disposal.

Why you cannot just put a TV out

Electronics are the category where curbside goes wrong most often. Metro Atlanta is a patchwork of collection arrangements — the City of Atlanta, unincorporated DeKalb and Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton, plus the individual cities like Decatur, Brookhaven, Dunwoody, Sandy Springs and Smyrna — and electronics are frequently excluded from ordinary bulk pickup even where furniture is not.

Several counties in the metro run periodic electronics recycling events, often a few weekends a year, and some have standing drop-off arrangements. Check your county's current schedule rather than assuming. If there is an event coming up and your TV is already in the garage, take it — that is genuinely free.

What does not work is leaving a screen at the curb and hoping. It sits, it gets rained on, and a wet TV is worse than a dry one for everyone downstream.

The Atlanta CRT problem

There is an entire generation of enormous rear-projection and tube TVs sitting in basements across this metro, and they have been there for fifteen years because nobody could face moving them.

You know the ones. A 200-pound rear-projection set in the daylight basement of a Sandy Springs ranch. A tube TV in the under-house garage of a Chamblee split-foyer. A console set in a Decatur bungalow den. They came in when the house had a stronger back in it, and they have not moved since.

These are not solo jobs and they are not a sedan job either. They are also, price-wise, just a TV: a set under 42 inches is $62 and anything 42 to 65 is $68, regardless of whether it weighs nine pounds or ninety and regardless of which floor it is on. There is no stair charge.

The other pile: cables, towers and the box of chargers

Every house in the metro has one. A plastic bin or a cardboard box with a dead desktop tower, three routers, a printer that jammed in 2016, a tangle of HDMI and power cables, a couple of old phones, and a sound bar that stopped working.

That is a box of electronics at $77, and it is the easiest single decision in a cleanout. Two of them is $77 + $77 = $154.

A home office clear-out is usually: box of electronics $77 + computer monitor $58 + desk $83 = $218.

Wipe your data first

This is on you and it is worth ten minutes.

• Smart TVs hold Wi-Fi credentials and signed-in streaming accounts. Do a factory reset from the settings menu before it leaves.
• Computers. Pull the drive or wipe it. A quick delete is not a wipe.
• Printers with a hard drive, particularly office machines, store scanned documents. Commercial copiers almost always do.
• Phones and tablets. Sign out of the account first, then factory reset, or the device stays locked to you.

Do this the day before, not while the crew is waiting in your driveway.

Office and small business electronics

Atlanta has a lot of small offices turning over — the converted warehouse space in West Midtown and the Upper Westside, the older buildings along Peachtree, the suburban office parks around Perimeter, Cumberland and Gwinnett Place. When a lease ends, the electronics are the part nobody planned for.

A commercial copier or printer is $97. A cubicle or office workstation is $163. A conference table is $260. An office chair is $61. Those add straight up: copier $97 + conference table $260 + office chair $61 = $418.

If it is a whole floor rather than a room, the truck ladder is the right shape: half $431, three-quarters $587, full $732.

Access, docks and the drive

Electronics jobs are usually small in volume and high in awkwardness, which makes access the main planning question.

If you are in a Midtown or Buckhead tower, the building needs a certificate of insurance and a booked freight elevator window before anyone can move a 65-inch set through the lobby. In a BeltLine five-over-one, the garage clearance often keeps the truck outside and the carry runs across the deck. In a garden apartment off Buford Highway or Clairmont, it is an exterior stair and no elevator at all.

None of that changes the price, and the arrival window is fixed at booking — which matters when the alternative is waiting all afternoon for a crew that is somewhere on I-285.

Booking it

Count the screens, add the box, add the stand if the stand is going, and you have your total. Pick a window and it is done in one visit — including the set in the basement that two people have been avoiding for a decade.

Frequently asked questions