We had upgraded our phones recently and Verizon quoted us $45 trade in for each Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. I wanted to poke around a little and see if I could do better. I suspected I might have a shot at a little more money.
I knew the condition of the phones would be critical to obtaining the best value. We’ve had these phones in cases with screen protectors from day one (two years ago), and there were no scratches, chips, or other signs of wear. Peel off the screen protector and the screen was flawless. Wish I had taken photos, but trust me the phones were in flawless condition. Really.
I checked a few sites (Gazelle and some others) and in many cases, the price came back lower than the Verizon’s trade-in. Frustrated, I dug a little more.
After some additional digging, I found MaxBack. I had never heard of MaxBack but, I poked around on their site and was satisfied everything was on the up and up. In case you haven’t heard of MaxBack either, here’s my review of the cellphone and tablet buying service.
I dove into their process for selling a cellphone. First, I selected a manufacturer.
Next, I chose the model of phone
Then, I was presented with a screen to choose the carrier….
After that, I selected the condition. Now, even though they say “90% of devices… ” I was fairly confident that ours would make the “Excellent” cut. So, that’s what I chose.
I added the phone into my cart and that’s we things got a little weird. I tried both button options to try and edit the cart to increase the quantity… but, there was no such option on this screen.
Frustrated, I chatted up the chat agent. They were friendly and offered me the option to call them. I really didn’t want to talk, I wanted to put another phone in my cart and get the sale moving. The chat agent couldn’t resolve the issue for me.
While I had the chat session going, I went back to the home page and started the process over again to add a phone to my cart. Thinking that might do the trick.
[Maxback, if you read this ^^^^^ it really needs fixing. For your reference I was in the Google Chrome browser.]My going back to the homepage and starting over, it worked… two phones were now in the cart. A little wonky but, I got it done.
I was able to complete my sale request and shipping material request.
A little less than a week goes by and my shipping materials arrive.
The box includes an instruction card with the order printed on the back, a pre-paid USPS label, a security seal and two pieces of foam.
Instruction card.
Why thank you! ;)
Squeezing the two S4s took a little bit of doing, but I managed to get them in there along with their charging cords. I wound up wrapping one phone in a paper towel so it wouldn’t get scratched during shipping. The package was bulging a bit so, I applied some packing tape. Then, the MaxBack supplied security seal.
After shipping it back, it was a seamless process. MaxBack sent me an email that they had received my shipment and day or so later, a second email with the results of the inspection and serial number check. Turned out we were eligible for “Excellent” condition. Awesome!
A deposit to my PayPal account followed right after that, pretty easy.
Do you have a few phones hanging around? Give MaxBack a try. It might be worth a few extra dollars in your pocket. http://www.maxback.com/