Top tips for selling your phone online

Selling your phone online should be quick, easy and most of all profitable. But is it as easy as that or are there things to take into consideration before sending your phone away? Here are some top tips for selling your phone online:

1 – Get the best price possible by selling it as soon as possible

If you are selling your phone online, then it sounds obvious that you would want to get the best price possible. However, thousands of people make the mistake of not selling their phone soon enough. People tend to buy a new phone, swap from the old phone to the new one and then put the old phone in the drawer, often to be forgotten about for months. This is the biggest mistake you can make.

As a general rule, the newer the phone, the more demand there is for it on the second hand market and therefore the higher the price you will receive when you come to sell it online.

So don’t hang around, get that old phone sold as soon as you can and guarantee yourself the best price. As the weeks and months go by your old phone will become worth less and less.

2 – Sell your phone before a newer model arrives

It goes without saying that newer or even current model phones are the most desirable and therefore command the best sale prices online.

As an example – if you have an iPhone 11 to sell and the most up to date iPhone model is the iPhone 11 you will get a great price. When the iPhone 12 is launched, your iPhone 11 will drop in value a little because it is no longer the latest and most desirable phone.

Once again this shows the importance of selling your old phone a soon as you can. A matter of only a few weeks could mean a big drop in its value, so don’t delay selling your phone any longer than you have to.

3 – Mint condition phones are worth more than tatty phones

It goes without saying that a mint condition phone will be worth more than a tatty or broken phone. It might be too late for you this time, but if you’ve just bought a new phone we strongly recommend using a case and screen protector. This will ensure when you come to sell your next phone it will be in tip top condition and command a strong price.

It’s far easier for a mobile phone recycler to sell a phone that looks like new and works perfectly – demand is always high for well cared for phones. Tatty or damaged phones are hard to sell and often need work doing to them before they can be re-sold. This often involves new parts, a technicians time and time to test the repaired or reconditioned phone. This all costs and that’s why a tatty or damaged phone is worth so much less.

4 – Be honest when you sell your phone

Mobile phone recyclers will always ask you a series of questions about the phone you are selling – they need to know what they are buying and they need to offer you the best price they can to remain competitive.

Our advice is always be honest when selling your old phone online. Phones are always inspected extremely carefully by expert technicians. If your phone is scratched or dented, don’t try and sell it as like new because you will only set yourself up for disappointment when you get offered less once the phone has been inspected.

5 – Don’t be afraid to sell something really old

There are lots of really good reasons to sell a much older phone and it’s not about the money this time – actually you might not get anything for the phone at all.

Often, really old phones are essentially worthless because nobody wants them. Older phones tend to become too slow or can’t run the latest operating system and for this reason nobody wants them.

So why recycle a phone if you won’t get any money for it? The answer to this is that you would be doing the right thing by the environment. If you put an old phone in the bin, it will more than likely end up in landfill. If however you send your old phone to a mobile phone recycler they will recycle it responsibly. An average smartphone consists of around 40% metals(mainly copper, gold, platinum, silver and tungsten)40% plastics and 20% ceramics and trace materials. All of these materials can used again rather than being buried in the ground which is both wasteful and can often be polluting.

6 – Take care of your phone when you send it off

Our final tip for selling your phone online is to take as much care as you can when sending your phone away. Pretend your phone is a chicken egg and package it up accordingly – you wouldn’t put an egg in an unpadded envelope in the hope it arrived in in one piece would you?

If you have some bubble wrap, use that to protect the phone from knocks and bangs. Ideally, put the well wrapped phone in either a padded envelope or a small cardboard box. This will give it the best chance of arriving in one piece and means you have more chance of getting the price you were quoted.

Insuring your package is also advisable. By insuring your phone, should the phone get lost or damaged you can at least get the value of the phone back rather than it being a total loss.