How to get rid of a TV in Houston

The short answer

Three prices, by size: under 42 inches $62, 42 to 65 inches $68, 65 inches and over $73. Minimum $75 per visit, so a single small set comes up to $75 — which is why it is worth adding the TV stand at $96 or whatever else is leaning against the garage wall.

A television cannot go in a household bag, and bulky collections across this metro commonly exclude electronics. Check your own city's current bulky-item page before assuming otherwise.

The garage holding pattern

Here is how nearly every one of these calls starts. A new television goes on the wall. The old one is perfectly fine, so it goes to the garage “for the guest room”. There are no basements in Houston, so the garage is where things go.

Then it sits. Through a summer, through two. Houston garages cycle through heat and humidity all season, and the components that fail first in those conditions are power supplies and board capacitors. By the time somebody plugs it in for the guest room, it does not come on.

If you genuinely want to re-home a television, do it in the first month. After a Houston summer in a garage it is a disposal item whether it looks like one or not.

Selling and donating it, realistically

A recent flat screen in working order with a remote will sell. Price it to move and expect no-shows; this is a large metro and people do not drive forty minutes across it for a used television.

Anything older than about eight years, anything with a mark on the panel, and every tube set — those do not sell and are not accepted by donation centers. Charities here decline tube televisions and old monitors as a matter of policy, because they cannot re-home them either.

Do not leave it at the front hoping a scrapper takes it. They take metal. A television is glass and plastic over a small amount of metal, and it will still be there tomorrow, and by then it will have been rained on.

Getting it off the wall

Large panels are awkward rather than heavy, and the awkwardness is the risk. A 65-inch set flexes if you carry it by one edge and that is how panels crack. Two people, held vertically by the frame, never laid face down on a hard surface.

The bracket is the other half. Most stay on the wall until somebody decides otherwise, and taking one off leaves four large anchors in the drywall. Decide before the crew arrives whether the mount is going too — it is not a separate charge, it is just faster if it has already been unbolted.

Wall-mounted televisions are common in the newer three-story townhomes in Rice Military, EaDo and Midtown, where the living space is on the second floor. Down two switchback stair runs with a big panel is real work, and it is included — no stair charge.

Wipe it before it leaves

A smart television holds account logins the way a phone does. Factory-reset it before the crew arrives: two minutes in the settings menu, and it removes every streaming account you ever signed into on it.

The same goes for any streaming stick left in the back of it, which is the thing everyone forgets. Check the ports.

The rest of the media wall

Televisions rarely leave alone. The addition, shown:

• TV between 42 and 65 inches and the entertainment center under it: $68 + $96 = $164
• A 65-inch-plus panel, a large speaker system and a stereo: $73 + $57 + $52 = $182
• Two old sets out of a garage — one under 42 inches, one between 42 and 65: $62 + $68 = $130
• Television, TV stand, sofa and a large area rug from a living room being cleared: $68 + $96 + $126 + $68 = $358

Apartments and the storm-season shuffle

In a garden complex there is no curb to use. The dumpster sits inside a gated enclosure and a television is not going through that gate, and leaving one beside it comes back as a charge on the final statement. The pickup is the option, from whatever floor it is on.

And the annual Gulf-storm shuffle produces its own version: households moving things up off ground floors, clearing space, and finding two televisions they had forgotten about. Doing that in May rather than in the week a storm is forecast is the whole trick — the price is the same, the availability is not.

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