Thoughts

Never, I Repeat Never Use Amazon to Trade In Your iPhone [UPDATED]

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People, I feel like I got shafted by a brand I love. That brand is Amazon.

2 weeks ago my wife and I took the plunge and upgraded our phones to iPhone 5. We both had iPhone 4s. (that is plural for iPhone 4 not 4Seseses)

Normally after we upgrade our phones, I erase them and strip them down to be used as iPods for the kids but this past Christmas we bought them iPod Touches so their tech was better than our dinosaurs. The result: I set out to try to sell them. I was pretty excited when I did some research and saw that Amazon had a trade-in program and after using their online value calculator was doubly pleased to see that our 16GB iPhone 4s with next to no scratches would still fetch $170/piece! That felt great as our “Sign your life away to the devil for 2 more year” subsidized price for the new phones were $400 so that meant we were really only taking a net loss of around $60.

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I had seen a bunch of services that buy back electronics and while some services seemed to offer a little bit more I felt I couldn’t go wrong with Amazon. Yeah, it’s a third party that works with Amazon but I trusted them by association. Yeah, the catch with selling to Amazon is they give it to you as a gift card but I’m a proud Amazon Prime member that would easily find ways to spend that credit. I think you know where I’m going here.

I filled out the online form with no trouble, printed out the paid UPS shipping label, boxed up the phones and shipped it out.

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3 days later I got an email that said one of my phones was deemed acceptable, $167.25 was deposited as a Gift Card but the other phone was declared “Unacceptable” and will be returned. (I had checked the option of having my item returned because I felt the least I could do would be to use it as a remote or something)

I was a little surprised that the phone got rejected as it was in perfect working order when I sent it. But I decided it would be ok, I would just get my phone returned and sell it on eBay or Craigslist.

3 days later I received a package in the mail with the returned phone.

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It was in a non-descript white box which I appreciated as I didn’t want wannabe thieves to see an iPhone box on my porch.

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Inside it contained the same exact packing slip that I printed out from my home printer so I felt assured that I did in fact get my original phone sent back.

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The iPhone was packed nicely in a bubble wrap envelope and the phone was nice and clean coming out. I decided to turn it on to verify I wasn’t crazy–that I did in fact send back a perfectly good phone to get traded in.

That’s when I noticed I got robbed by Amazon

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I turned on the phone and was greeted with a message that said there was no SIM card installed.

Huh? What the…really?!!!

Yes, I confirmed that there was no SIM card in my phone. It had been removed. And kept. And not returned with my phone.

I immediately gave Amazon the benefit of the doubt. “Let me contact them.” I said. “They will make this right.”

Off to the website I went in search of a live chat function. When it comes to things like this I always default to Live Chat because I want a record of everything. While a phone call is sometimes easier (and Amazon has great phone service typically) I wasn’t taking any chances this time.

I launched the live chat and then waited….and waited….and waited….

You may be saying to yourself, “But Greg, they are busy and they sometimes have a queue.” And that is true. However this waiting (and waiting and waiting) actually was after I got connected to “Kisha”

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In fact, it took almost 5 minutes before I got her first response. In that time I tapped out a few more questions…

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Then tweeted this:

Here’s the full chat and some of the elapsed times between messages:
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As you can see, I was getting annoyed.

As I was waiting, I did some searches on the Amazon forums and found this link. Apparently, I’m not the only one.

I’m so stupid! I should have totally done my research. I literally said to my wife before I chose Amazon, “There are other services that offer to pay more but I feel safer to use Amazon.”



Yes, it’s a third-party that handles these trade-ins but as far as I’m concerned Amazon is responsible right? If my kid rips off your kid on the playground I ‘m the one that will pay him back. That’s the rules of the playground and the rules of the internet IMO. Do you agree? (I’m typing angry right now)

So here’s where I’m at people.

1. I have a returned iPhone, returned because it doesn’t work even though it does, with a missing SIM card.
2. I’ll get an email in 24-48 hours.
3. If I’m not satisfied I can call a number.

I will update this post as I get more information.

Grrrrrrrrrr.

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Monday March 25th, 2013 Update

All weekend I stewed. It isn’t necessarily the dollar amount value of the SIM card. In fact, depending on where you are selling and what you are selling it for, SIM cards can go for anywhere from $5 to $60. It was always about the fact that the card was taken out and not returned. And that brings up a whole other list of things that made me further question the credibility of Amazon’s chosen third-party reseller. (Namely the fact that the returned phone is perfectly fine.) Upon further digging through the complaints on the Amazon forums, I noticed a trend that many people who complained about their perfectly fine device getting rejected did it when trying to trade-in multiple devices at the same time. Interesting, yes. But not enough to conclude definitively.

Friday night I was told to expect an email update between 24-48 hours. This morning was 60 hours later and still no response. So I went back to the Live Chat on Amazon.com and asked again. Here’s the chat:

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In a nutshell, I’m satisfied.

Cristina was way more attentive than Kisha was friday night. Is it a function of friday evenings being busier than monday mornings? Or Cristina is just better than Kisha? Doesn’t really matter. Most customers don’t have the luxury of comparing live chat agents with each other. Brands need to be perfect for every interaction IMO.

As you can see, I was issued a $10 credit to my account to be able to purchase a new SIM card. I will do that today. I was also able to express my concern about the third-party vendor. P.S. I really did feel bad about the misspelling of her name. I truly do hate it when people ignore proper spelling. I get “Gregg” all the time.

Within 2 minutes of completing the chat I received a followup email from Cristina.
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I did not receive a similar one friday night. I don’t know if it is because Kisha knew It wouldn’t be favorable. Or Kisha forgot to do it. Or the issue was now marked as resolved and it triggered the email automatically.

I still have not received the original email that was promised to me regarding the further investigation. Who knows if i ever will?

Gregory Ng

GOAL: Visit 100 National Parks as a family by 2020. Favorite Parks: Zion National Park, Mt Rainier National Park, Valley Forge National Historical Park

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