Apple Lowers iPhone Trade-In Values as Limited-Time Promotion Ends

The "offer" was 10-20$ more?Wow, Apple should be careful to not going bankrupt. Why do people use these trade-ins anyway? they're absolute rip-offs.

Sure it’s a few hundred dollars less than you could get on Facebook marketplace but it’s also easy. You don’t have to worry about the guy looking at your phone and running off and you get nothing. You don’t have to deal with the dozens of scam replies, asking if you could send the phone to their just married son in law.

I think the ideal situation is if you live in a family where you can hand your phone down to someone else.

The "offer" was 10-20$ more?Wow, Apple should be careful to not going bankrupt. Why do people use these trade-ins anyway? they're absolute rip-offs.

As someone whose sold on eBay and other places, sometimes its a lot less of a hassle to trade in to Apple than risk selling it yourself. Recently put an old iPad on Swappa, and sell went well, but it got to the destination and essentially has been "delayed" for 10+ days, essentially I consider it lost. Ended up having to refund the buyer and lost $200.

And don't get me started on buyers who purchase something and either it's not compatible or they just claim it doesn't work even through it was working right before I took it out and carefully put it into the box. Had someone claim some sticks of Ram weren't compatible, a GPU wasn't working and an SSD stopped working. All these items were working fine. It's like there's so many ****** people and liars especially with electronics and computer parts. It's just exhausting.

On top of it all, all the silly rules the platforms have. Swappa wants pictures at all angles, but if you're an "enterprise" seller you can sell devices without any photos of the actual device. If you sell on Reddit's hardware swap, they have their own set of rules and are ban happy.

tl;dr selling used stuff is a headache these days.

Sure it’s a few hundred dollars less than you could get on Facebook marketplace but it’s also easy. You don’t have to worry about the guy looking at your phone and running off and you get nothing. You don’t have to deal with the dozens of scam replies, asking if you could send the phone to their just married son in law.

I think the ideal situation is if you live in a family where you can hand your phone down to someone else.

This is why I trade in with Apple. It's the convenience of it. Depending on the model, you still get about half the original value of the phone, and they give you everything in the box they ship your new phone in to ship back the old one. It's also pretty much the highest trade in value out of any other retailer, carrier, etc.

The reality of it is that the average person isn't going to spend $800-1000 on your used phone on Facebook Marketplace, and it's just going to collect dust until you decide to lower the price to something closer to Apple's values anyways, and you have to go through the trouble of meeting up with potentially sketchy people. Things were different back in the day of subsidized phones for $300-400 when you could get the full value back after two years.

I once sold a phone to a college kid who I had to drive to an ATM because the one on campus wouldn't let him take out more than a couple hundred dollars. Well, it was the same result at a different ATM and I had to end up signing up for Cash App to accept a payment from him. The whole time I'm just wondering if he's trying to get me to accept less than our original agreed to amount. Luckily it worked out, but it's just not a good experience.

The "offer" was 10-20$ more?Wow, Apple should be careful to not going bankrupt. Why do people use these trade-ins anyway? they're absolute rip-offs.

I get your point, but don't you have like resellers in the US? Here in Europe we got some and the prices are kinda okay-ish. I'd say an iP 15 PM 256GB in a good conditions goes for like 600€ (while on eBay it would sell to a private for 700€). While Apple offers you 450 or something.

But yea sure, best thing is to pass it among the family. I completely agree with that.

Edit: I just looked it up for Switzerland. iPhone 15 Pro Max 1TB gives you indeed 450 Swiss francs. (aka 520 USD). If you sell it you would get at least between 800 and 900 Swiss francs. If you bring it to Germany and sell it there a bit more

Maybe Euro buyers are more honest, but scammers here in the USA are out of control because of lack of repercussions. Been scammed multiple times myself as a seller. I’ve basically resigned myself to either risk getting scammed/robbed/killed selling in person, ripped off on ebay where ebay ALWAYS sides with the buyer, or just passing it on to a family member if I’m not trading in to Apple or a carrier.

Who cares what value Apple puts on them, any smart person would sell them for much more elsewhere. It’s only the lazy people that trade their iPhones at the Apple Store.