Apple launches trade-in service for old iPhones

Got an iPhone gathering dust or want to cash you current model in? Apple will now pay you up to £175. But the deal is not as good as it sounds...

You can now get up to £175 for trading in your old iPhone at Apple Stores across the UK.

Just take your old model to your local Apple Store and it will be inspected by one of the in-house ‘genuises’. They’ll assess the quality of the handset and work out how much to offer you for it. If your phone is locked to a single network, you’ll get a lower offer.

But be warned: you won’t get cold, hard cash for your old iPhone. Instead you’ll be offered the money in the form of an Apple gift card, which then must be uses to purchase a new iPhone activated in store with the network of your choice.

So it’s only an option if you’re committed to Apple and want to simply cut the cost of upgrading to the latest model. But can you get a better deal on eBay or through one of the many mobile phone recycling sites? Let’s take a look.

Recycling your phone

Sell My Mobile is a comparison site that gives you an idea of which particular recycling site will give you the most cash for your mobile phone. The table below outlines the three highest offers (and where they come from) on a range of older iPhone models

As you can see, with any model more recent than the iPhone 4, which was released in 2010, you’ll like pocket more cash by recycling your phone than using the Apple trade-in service.

[SPOTLIGHT]That said, it would be remiss of me not to mention that you may not get the figures mentioned above. Some phone recycling sites have awful reputations for going back on their offers for all sorts of spurious reasons.

To ensure you don’t get caught out, read How to avoid being conned when recycling old mobile phones.

Is your mobile phone covered on your home insurance policy? Compare policies with lovemoney.com

Selling it yourself

You could take a more direct route and try to sell the phone yourself on a site like eBay or Amazon Marketplace.

Here are the average prices each of the phones above are currently commanding on these two sites.

Obviously there is more effort involved in selling directly to another person through one of these sites. There’s also no guarantee that you will actually get any offers, and there are insertion and postage costs to consider which will dent the money you make. But again, you’re likely to get a far more impressive return for your old phone than by using the Apple trade-in service.

Read How to sell successfully on eBay.

Trapped by Apple

As a brand, Apple attracts some very dedicated fans who wouldn’t dream of switching to a different manufacturer. They always want to have the latest Apple model, and the Apple trade-in service seems designed for them. No doubt while they are busy getting a new deal on the latest handset, they will also have their heads turned by an iPad or iMac too.

But if you like a little flexibility and aren’t shackled to the iStore then the trade-in service is less than useless. It offers a poor return for your old phone that you can’t even choose where to spend.

Compare mobile phone deals with Recombu

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