Nowadays with devices being upgraded often, those who want to keep abreast with the newest tech will soon find that their old devices are piling up somewhere in The House, gathering dust. There are many ways to get them off your hands like selling them on eBay, donating them to charity and so on. But have any of you tried trade-in deals? I've heard that even Amazon has a trade-in program where you hand over your old phone in return for an Amazon gift card? Question is, are trade-in deals better than selling your old device yourself?
I had some old computers around the house last year and I decided to fix them up and donate them to my church. Old devices are very easy to up grade and as such can be useful to someone somewhere. When I am on ebay I notice that many people are selling their old computers for some reasonable cheap prices. Trading in your device is quick and you wont have to worry about cutting prices to get your item sold. Selling it yourself you will be responsible for advertising the item, setting a reasonable price etc.
I have a lot of my old electronic devices dumped in certain parts of the house, I don't know where. Other electronic devices that I use, I give to my mom. Like my Asus netbook, and my NEO laptop. Probably, I'll also give her my Note 2 if I ever have the chance to get a Note 4. There are some cellphones though that I have sold to small shops that buy used phones. Selling used electronic devices only brings a small amount of cash. But it's still better than nothing I guess.
I use my old electronic devices until they get broken, so when I retire them they're usually useless already, because I seldom upgrade my device. I'm not really a fan of the prices of the newly released gadgets so I wait until the price gets lower before I consider buying them. Our pc's for example, are used until they can't be repaired anymore.
I usually just sell them on shops before they get too old to be useful. Sometimes I tend to dissasemble them and probably find some useful parts on it. I also tend to give them away to friends that might need them
You can try to sell them. That's probably the best way you can get rid of them and make a profit. You can also try to give them away as gifts or you can just donate them some place.
I rarely buy new gadgets or electronics unless they have malfunctioned beyond repair. Even so, I don't throw them away. I still have a couple of monitors that I just lay there collecting dust. It's most probably because I have no idea how to dispose of them or I've a sense of attachment, not willing to get rid of them.
I've found that old devices can be used with money making apps in a "farming" style to make me a little side money or at least pay for the cost of my cable wireless bill. There are applications that pay you small amounts of money to "watch" videos on your mobile devices, and as long as you aren't paying for data on those devices, you can make a modest amount of money with them, certainly more in the long run than selling them would make.
I usually just keep them because by the time I'm replacing them they aren't worth very much anymore anyway, and even more so when I am trading instead of selling. If I sold them then it wouldn't be worth the effort and if I gave it away then I'd have to spend a good amount of time transferring and erasing data, so I just keep it for when I need the data in the future I could just go back to my old devices.
With most of the hardware I replace I try building a new machine. We're a pretty big family so every PC matters, we don't have to battle on who's browsing the web I learned quite a bit about computer assembly over the years so it makes sense to pass my unused hardware to other family members instead of selling it for a few measly bucks. Even if the PC I build it's not that powerful it's a cheaper solution than buying a new one and it gets the job done (internet/movies/low end gaming).
I rarely sell my old stuff. I usually give them to my relatives and friends. However, I'm not the kind of guy who likes to keep up with all the latest gadgets, so I don't really have a lot of stuff to begin with. If I know that a relative or friend needs it, then I just give it away. Otherwise, I sell it usually online.
It depends what device it is. Whenever I get a new mobile phone, I will always sell my old handset and then use it to purchase the new one. Usually, I make a little bit of profit from doing it this way, so it is something that I would recommend. If I am buying something like a new games console I will often put a message out on social media sites offering the device for a certain price before I choose to sell it, because I would much prefer to be able to sell it to someone I know where possible, because then they are getting something for cheap, I am getting a small amount of money towards my new device, and we both know that we can trust each other.
It depends on what device we're talking about, but if it's electronics then I always save them, because I know I'll need them in the future for different projects. I had an old laptop which I converted into a nice Media Player, which I only use to control the music. I only left the LCD display out, so there's not much wiring involved.
I have given away a few phones, but I tend to keep them as there is still data on them and trading them in is not worth it. Laptops are the same, the tend to stay in the house as back ups as data is still on them. Often the software is so out of date, it is not worth trading it in. Maybe one day these old phones may be worth something!
I always sell my old devices. I've never needed one after I bought a newer one, so I think that making a bit of money out of them is the best you can do with those devices.
The only device that I actually upgrade is my mobile phone, I normally give the old one to my girlfriend. I don't normally have laptops, ipods and other similar devices for long enough and they normally break and are replaced instead of upgraded in the traditional sense.
I usually keep my old device for a back up. I never know if something will go wrong with my new device and I refuse to be out of a phone while mine gets fixed. Sometimes I trade my phone in if I have insurance on my new device.
I sell them to friends or on eBay. However in both cases it's important to remember to completely wipe your personal data off of them, so it cannot be retrieved. The trade in programs I've seen so far are a joke. Verizon only wanted to give me $6 for my Droid Bionic. I sold it on eBay for $30, not including shipping. The other thing that can become a problem is if you accidentally (or purposefully) deleted off your backup partition with your OEM copy of Windows that came bundled with your computer. I've done that on two of my computers so far, when I put Windows 7 on them. But now if I go to sell these down the road, I am going to have to sell them as is without any OS, since I got rid of the old OS to make more space on my drives. More recently I also gave away an old laptop of mine to a friend of mine with three kids, who are old enough they should start using computers. She's financially cash strapped and cant really afford to buy one for them right now, so I just gave her one I wasn't using. It's better than it collecting dust.
