Buying a smartphone secondhand is often sketchy business. You go through Craigslist looking for what seems like the perfect deal, and then meet up in the most public place possible to investigate the merchandise and finally make the purchase. Or, you can go eBay, and hope that what you get in the box after you paid for it is, in fact, a phone.
It’s not the best experience, no matter how you look at it, but if you’ve broken your phone and there is another 10 months before you can upgrade, what are you going to do? Swappa has created a third party market that allows uses to inspect their merchandise, lets the buyer and seller communicate in a moderated yet private forum, and make sure the deal goes down smooth for both parties.
Maybe you’re the guy who just has to have the latest smartphone. Sure, that Galaxy Nexus was a nice phone and all, but the HTC One X is coming out soon and you’ve just got to get your hands on it! Unless you’ve managed to skillfully stretch out your family plan so you have an upgrade every few months, you’re going to be shelling out that $600 or so every time you get a new phone. Swappa lets you get some of that cash back, and does it in such a way that you don’t have to worry about to worry about the buyers remorse email from Paypal.
Creating a listing on Swappa is really easy, and walks you through any possible scrapes and scuffs the phone might have. For $10, you can set whatever price you want, and put the phone up for the rest of the world to see. Several Swappa users have reported having the entire transaction process being completed the same day they created it, as users on the other end search for phones at reasonable prices.
The really unique part about Swappa is the communication. When you have a question about a phone it gets asked in forum that is recorded on the site, but only available to the buyer, the seller, and the admins. This way, if the phone you get isn’t quiet the way it was described, a Swappa admin can get involved and resolve any potential dispute with all of the information available to them. Swappa is Android only for the moment, but the site recently updated to allow users to buy and sell tablets as well as phones. The website has no shortable of phones, ranging from devices that are only a few weeks old to the original Droid, and Swappa also supports rooted devices and devices running custom roms.
Overall, Swappa offers an enticing alternative to the secondhand phone markets I have experienced in the past, with a solid focus on the user experience.
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