Trade In Tool - this has to be an elaborate scam, right?

[bowendesign]

I've no idea how this is supposed to encourage customers to stay with Vodaphone and upgrade.

I have a good condition iPhone Mini 13 with 90% battery and was looking to upgrade, downloaded the tool and... wow. £69? Allegedly "signs of damage" on the screen. It's had a screen protector on pretty much the entire time I've owned it. I've just done the test again ten minutes later and now it's saying... £67.50?

What are the exact technical details of this piece of software? How does it reach this amount, on what basis? An iphone Mini even at b-grade would get £219 at CEX, cash. Trade? Nearly £300. 

Are your engineers really, honestly saying that the screen could have degraded so much over a year of use? The response time is completely. What difference in milliseconds are we talking here? What "damage" could it be talking about to devalue it by so much? Did I sneeze on it one time? (probably)

I mean obviously I've no intent of going forward with trading in. It's quite clearly a cleverly made scam in the same way electronic gambling machines are, and heavily weighted against the customer. Shameful stuff, really. I do wonder how may times less aware or older people have been tricked into selling on their phone for half the value it could be sold second-hand.

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @bowendesign 

I agree it can be sometimes complexing and confusing and I appreciate some owners just prefer not having the hassle of selling their phone in other ways.

Trade In Online Tools usually go by the current market costing for that particular phone model, and then by what the owner suggests about it's current condition, and then when they recieve the phone it's fully appraised and a final price offered.

Personally I don't take up Trade In offers and instead sell the phone privately to work colleagues, family or friends as this way one tends to attain a better price.

I do not use selling sites such as ebay due to the possibility of being scammed.

[chistery]

Yes. I've called it a scam before on here before, along with others. It always seems to down value phones saying there's a screen issue when there's clearly not. Avoid it. Sell elsewhere.

Samsung gave me £660 for my old phone. Vodafone offered me £120.

[bowendesign]

This feels like an issue for trading standards but there’s probably no law regulating this particular side of the market. Far less aware customers are going to take this at face value.

 The main issue I have is telling the customer their phone is broken and the opaque nature of the tool. If it was simply a bad offer then fine, but that’s not what’s happening here.

 Clearly some form of regulation should be needed for things like this.