Thursday, November 24, 2011

Ebay? Craigslist? Gazelle? UsedCameraBuyer?

Everyone has heard about selling things through eBay or Craigslist, and many people have done so.  It can be great, but it can take a lot of time and be a big hassle.  I have had fairly expensive things, like a laptop or a camera, get "bought" by a scammer at the end of an eBay auction.  They want you to ship the equipment to some far off country, knowing that their payment is worthless.  You have to file a bunch of complaints and restart the auction.  Yuck.

Along comes an easier model.  You go to a buyer's web site, tell them what you want to sell and what condition it is in, then they give you a price.  If you are willing to take it, you ship your stuff to them and after they verify the condition, they send you the money.  Fast. Easy. Reliable.

So far I have used two of these:
  • UsedCameraBuyer was good for selling my old Nikon D200 DLSR and a lens that came with it.  They were a bit slower than I hoped though.
  • Gazelle was great for buying old phones and other electronics. When I moved to Verizon on a new iPhone 4S, that left me with an AT&T iPhone 4.  Gazelle bought it from me for $170 and paid for the shipping. In fact, if I took payment with an Amazon gift card (and I did), I got another 5%.
I was pleased with both of these services.  Has anyone out there tried others like this? Any advice of ones to try or to stay away from?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They used to be very good, but recently it has been like pulling teeth to get the payments they promise. They blamed Thanksgiving and now I guess they will blame Xmas. What's worse, emails to their posted email address have been coming back as undeliverable.

Caveat emptor