The curious tale of selling a phone on Swappa and having it be resold for $100 more
This past month, I wanted to sell some of my development phones so that I could put funds towards a used Galaxy S22 as I try to keep up-to-date with the latest in Android phones. I decided to do this on Swappa, which is a market geared towards selling used equipment. For buying phones, I generally much prefer it compared to eBay (and prices are usually lower too). Aside from business listings (which I avoid), you get photos of the actual phone you’re getting, and you shop from ordinary people just trying to sell their phones maybe for an upgrade, some more money, or get rid of clutter, and I like that personal touch.
In February, I listed two of my phones, a Galaxy S9+ (that one went without a hitch and sold in about a week), and a Galaxy Note 10+. The Note 10+ is where things get curious.
After about 2 weeks of my listing being up and dropping my initial price from $300 to $260, a comment showed up on the listing asking if I’d take $220. Obviously I said no, I’ll do $245 at minimum. For context, the lowest price good condition Note 10+ phones were about $260. $220 was massively lowballing it and $245 was conservative to say the least and heading into fair condition territory.
But this buyer pushed for $240 - and $240 including the buyer fee (if you don’t know about Swappa, there’s a 3% seller fee that’s paid by the buyer and 3% that’s paid by the seller. You set an ask price, the listing price shown to users is 103% of the ask price to account for the fee. Had I not included the fee and set the ask price to 240, the listing price was $248).
But alas, this phone had been sitting on sale for 2 weeks and my mid-semester break was rapidly approaching, so I wanted the phone gone. I took the lowball and the phone sold. After fees and USPS postage, I ended up netting about $206 from this sale (not terrible, but not great either). But whatever, what’s done is done, right?
Now, I would’ve left things at this, but I had noticed that when perusing other listings on Swappa, I’d remember I had seen this buyer in the comments section of listings (usually asking for lowballs, or more info on the condition of phones). Examining the profile, the buyer had bought well over 300 phones from Swappa, with a profile age of about 4 years. That averages to about a phone a week, so something smelled fishy. If every phone you bought was $200, that’s $10,400 for 52 weeks of the year…no small chunk of money. And the buyer’s name did not use the actual name of the person or an online username, it sounded like it was a reselling business.
And you’d be right! It was in fact a business. Some Googling later and I found the homepage of the business, and a tab to the shop page. When I first did my investigative Googling, it was before the phone had arrived according to tracking. As expected, there wasn’t a Note 10+ in sight. But checking today now that the phone did arrive, I’m almost confident this is my phone:
(the background has been blurred to prevent identifying where this phone is being sold. The buttons are black in this photo, they were cut off by the blur)
Yikes, that markup! Definitely suspicious to lowball people on Swappa only to sell it for a higher price for your own business.
What’s even more curious is the backside photo. Take a look at this crop of a screenshot of the backside photo of how it’s reflecting the light (and notice how the button color on the right is not black. The strip of black on the right side is part of the background. The actual buttons are light colored.)
That isn’t black! But this is where things get even weirder. From what I can recall, there was a Note10+ in Aura Glow selling on Swappa for about $215, the only defect being that the camera glass had a little tilt. I noticed the same buyer (well, business?) commented on that listing. It’s gone from Swappa so I’m almost positive the backside photo is the aura glow phone from Swappa.
We can also further confirm that it’s likely my phone for the first photo with the power of default wallpapers. Depending on the color of a Note 10+, the phone uses a different default background. Take a look at this photo of an Aura Glow listing on Swappa:
And you’ll see it uses a lighter, more aura wallpaper. It’s also not the same wallpaper as on the phone in the listing. Little fishy there…I also tried to look at the IMEI number on the back of the phone in the listing, even though I could only make out a string of 3 numbers, none of them matched the one I sold.
I’ll end the article here with my personal opinions about this. Of course these are just my opinions, and everyone’s entitled to different opinions.
Generally speaking I have a slight ethical issue with how this entire operation is run. I’m not the biggest fan of buying phones off of Swappa/eBay (more specifically phones that have been sitting for a while then trying to lowball since the seller is more desperate to sell at that point), buying them for your business, and marking it up by $100-$120. That’s extremely shady and honestly a lose-lose situation for the seller and the buyer of the now resold phone, because they could’ve bought that phone at that lower price.
On Swappa, $340 can buy you a Galaxy S22 (because that’s literally what I paid for my used Galaxy S22), a phone that is 3 years newer, or even a Galaxy S21 Ultra, a phone that is 2 years newer with a comparable screen size and battery (minus the S-Pen). This phone is no longer receiving OS updates (stopped at Android 12) and is on its way out with security updates (the latest one when I sold the phone was October 2022). Head to the Pixel side and you can buy a used Pixel 7(!!) for about $380 to $400, and that’s literally Google’s latest phone! Pixel 6 is much cheaper, about $220 for a good condition phone.
This business also sells Android phones with…generous markups. Here’s a few examples, reference prices are from recent Swappa sales:
Galaxy S21 Plus for $450 in B condition (so about a $150-$200 markup compared to Good/Fair on Swappa)
Galaxy Z Flip 3 for $440 (about a $125-$175 markup)
iPhone 8 256GB for $220 ($110 markup compared to the 64 GB, $70-$80 compared to 256 GB)
Galaxy S10+ for $260 ($80 markup)
Galaxy S9+ for $200 ($75 markup)
Galaxy S8 for $140 ($60 markup)
Note 9 for $200 ($50 markup)
I won’t talk about the hilariously short warranty included with these phones, but in short it’s under 2 weeks and you can pay even more money for a 30-day warranty. Yes, a 30-day warranty.
For 15% of the sale price.
huh?
I also won’t get into the roundabout discussions on the risks of buying used phones, and that sure, maybe there’s a value add in that the phone has been inspected to make sure it works, it’s not banned on cell networks, it’s a local business, etc.
However, spoiler alert, Swappa already has this value add without the markup! Listings are verified by humans, IMEIs are checked, phones with iCloud/Google FRP locks aren’t allowed, and no cracked phones are allowed either. If you end up getting a phone that doesn’t meet what’s specified in the listing, Swappa has very clear policies on refunds. It’s genuinely one of the safest places to buy a used phone and for the 3 phones I’ve bought from Swappa, all have been great.
Three lessons to learn from here. Number one - make sure you don’t get upsold on used phones! Number two - Swappa is a great place to buy used phones. Number three, if you can - don’t let your phone get sold to people are just gonna mark it up and not use it.
Anyway, disappointing to see where my phone ended up as I wanted it to end up in the hands of someone who’d use it (I guess it will, just at the price of $340 instead). And that’s all for this deep dive in how I sold my phone to a reseller, marker upper, scalper, idk man
(update, the phone was off the website like 3ish days after I wrote this blog post so I’m assuming it was sold. and no, it was NOT me).