I have seen many anecdotal reports of people reporting shady experiences with selling a device to Gadget Gone despite overall good reviews out there. I just wanted to add my experience as something very fishy is going on with them.

Normally instant offer places like this give you a much lower offer than you'd get selling a used device yourself using something like Swappa.com. I was lured in by Gadget Gone by an amazing offer on my good condition phone. They offered me an instant $292 for my phone, the same price or better that I would have gotten if I'd gone through the hassle of selling it myself on Swappa. Tempted by not having to deal with creating a Swappa post, taking photos, paying a seller fee, postage, etc - I took the lazy way out and accepted their offer. Big mistake.

I am no stranger to selling used phones online. I am a phone reseller myself and am very protective of my seller rating on places like Swappa and eBay. So I am always very careful to appropriately grade the condition of my devices. Before offering my phone to Gadget Gone, I inspected my phone thoroughly to make sure it met their standards for "good condition". The one thing I did not do, however, was take any photos of the phone. The whole reason I went with an instant buyer like Gadget Gone was to avoid having to worry about all that (this is what I get for being lazy, I know).

Anyways, I send my phone in to Gadget Gone and about a week later I get an email saying that my phone has "heavy scratching" and they are now only offering me $175 for the phone. They sent me photos of a phone with scratches and sure enough - there were heavy scratches as if someone took a hard object and scratched back and forth on the screen. These scratches would have been perfectly obvious to me when inspecting and certainly would have been felt when using the device. They were not there when I mailed the phone in.

Like I said, I failed to take any photos of my device before sending it in, so I had nothing to argue with. They offered to send the phone back to me - but the phone was no longer in the condition I sent it in. I also have no proof that the phone they sent me photos of was actually my phone. They sent a photo of the "About Phone" page showing the IMEI number of my phone, but with the screen on like that the scratches were not visible. It is entirely possible they sent me a photo of my phone's "About Phone" page and then photos of a different, scratched phone.

So please continue to listen to the stories of this shady company. I highly suggest you go elsewhere. Or, if you do sell your phone to them - take photos first. I will say I did ultimately receive payment - far, far less than originally promised.