The market for used and old mobiles is flourishing – if statistics from auction sites are to be believed, there are an estimated quarter of a million people who are looking for or actively seeking to purchase a second-hand mobile phone within the United Kingdom alone. This splits the mobile phone consumer market into sub-sections – one of which is what is deemed as ‘the second-hand headset generation’. That means, that there are consumers out there who actively pursue the last generation of mobile phones in order to save money and get the best deal that they can. This places ‘new’ buyers in a very specific bracket within the mobile phone market.
Whether you are one of those people who look after their mobile phones (in order to keep as much value as possible), or whether you are off-handed with your phone; there will always be an opportunity to sell your old phone, in order to raise funds toward the contract of your new mobile phone.
Second-hand mobile phone market
We live in a society where the ‘here and now’ is paramount – people do not have the time to do as much market research and analytical groundwork required to buy a second-hand mobile. Think of it like used cars – if you don’t know what you are doing, you can potentially buy a heap of junk.
Well, the same could be said for mobile phones – an Apple iPhone 7 32gb might be mis-sold as an iPhone 7 16gb (and vice versa); this is where the problems lay. When you buy a brand new iPhone 7, you know what you are buying because the retailer clearly states it’s capabilities and specifications – if they didn’t, they could be prosecuted for false advertising.
These same rules do not necessarily translate to the second-hand market – and with that comes mistrust and technological oversights. I placed my iPhone 7 (32gb) on a local selling site and was inundated with constant questions about this and about that; rather than read the description, certain people will try to build a dialogue in the hope to drive down your price and try to bargain on the smallest of things. Not only that, if you accidentally miss a detail or discrepancy on the phone that you have come to live with, a new pair of eyes may notice said discrepancy and you are back to square one.
I have had this numerous times and I have begun to use specialist used mobile phone recycling sites – sites such as sellmymobile.com. The process of getting money for your old phones is easy thanks to sites like these who allow you to search for your model of phone and compare prices with which you could get for it. I sold my iPhone 7 to them in order to raise funds toward the contract for the latest iPhone 8 model. It was a simple enough task and I had my money within four days. I was lucky as I had kept my phone in excellent condition and it had no issues with the battery, the housing, or the microphones/earpiece.
Saying that a broken phone can also be sold using sellmymobile.com – just change the drop-down box to broken and you will be presented with a list of sites that will help you fund your new contracted phone – some will even promise to pay on the same day.
After doing my research, I worked out that mobile phone recycling sites offered as much as I could get by selling it myself using other sites. Add to that, the fees attached and the difficulty selling into the used mobile market; sellmymobile.com takes away the hassle and worry of trying to market your own phone to a very picky audience.
These comparison sites are a simple and effective way to enter into the used mobile phone market – problems and issues arose from my experience of selling my iPhone 7 and these were remedied within 5-10 minutes of browsing time.
It may be worth your time to grab those old phones and get checking – even older phones still have some use and broken phones will still fetch a price.
