Out with the old...

What to do with old electronics?  Donate to Charity?  That's always a good choice.  Recycle at a place like Best Buy?  Most would agree that's better than immediately ending up in a landfill.  Or my favorite, store the item in the basement for years, thinking you might one day need the item again, only to dispose of it years later.  Yeah, that’s me more often than not.

Nowadays though, as you may already know, there’s many options for selling or trading in certain electronic items to give them a second spin and to get a small return on your initial investment. 

Case in point, I recently replaced my iPhone 6 with a new iPhone 8.  Instead of letting my iPhone 6 collect dust until it was totally worthless, I decided to search out options for selling or trading it in. 

decluttr

There’s quite a few options out there, but I’m only going to review the one I used, decluttr.com.  They offered the highest bid to buy my phone, and I even found a coupon code to add 10% to the value.  All in all it was about 30% higher than offers from the few other sites I checked.

How does it work?  First, they ask you a few simple questions to help you grade the quality of your phone.  Next, you're immediately able to view the amount they’ll pay.  If you agree and want to continue, they’ll generate a free shipping label for you that must be used within a time frame specified in their instructions.  All you need is your phone, a box, and some packing materials.

I received emails at every step in the process, making it very clear what was happening.  I also apparently forgot to unlink the phone from my iCloud account, so they sent a clear email allowing me to remedy the situation and continue along the process.

Finally, within about a week from beginning to end I had the money in my PayPal account and one less thing cluttering up my basement.

Amazon Trade-In

Newly flush with virtual funds, I was inspired to get rid of my iPhone 4S.  Unfortunately, that was a little too old to show up on decluttr.com, so I used Amazon Trade-In, which works about the same way.  They’ll also ship the item back for free if for some reason they grade it at a lower level than you.  I’ve used Amazon to trade in CDs and console video games in the past with great success.  Anyway, they end up putting Amazon credit in your account.

Overall, I’d recommend decluttr or Amazon Trade In based on my limited experience with them.  Hopefully this helps you make a decision if you’re considering either.