After many questions, queries and at times, complaints about our pricing, we have decided to give an overview on how we decide the prices at which we buy phones on our trade-in site.
How do you decide how much you’ll pay for a phone?
At The Big Phone Store, customer satisfaction is our number one priority – without you we wouldn’t be where we are. If you are able to find a better price to sell your phone for, we do not expect you to sell your phone to us, in fact, we would encourage you to go ahead and get the best possible price.
The same ideology works in reverse when we sell phones – if someone is able to buy the exact same phone, like for like, from somewhere else that is cheaper, we do not expect them to buy from us just for the sake of it.
The way we price our phones the way that we do is as follows:
- Profitability – It is unsustainable for us to buy phones at a higher price than we can afford (businesses have lots of overheads to pay for). We need to ensure all costs are covered to leave us with a profit, you would be surprised at how small the profit is at times. It’s the efficiency of our processes and the automating of them wherever possible that allows us to operate on razor thin profits. We get accused of ripping off customers because we buy a phone for £250 and sell it for £375, making a £125 profit. What doesn’t get mentioned is that from this we need to pay taxes, advertising costs, processing costs, postage costs, banking & payment fees, royalty payments for our software and a long list of costs for the other pieces of equipment we use in this whole process.
- Demand – If your phone is in low demand, we need to take into consideration the possibility of whether we’re even able to sell your device at a later date. Vice versa, if a phone is in high demand you will notice our prices are significantly higher as we really, really want that phone! A clear example of this is that we’re currently paying high for iPhone’s but not so much these days for Blackberries.
- External Suppliers – As mentioned earlier, if you can buy an item for cheaper somewhere else, we don’t expect you to buy from us. The same applies to us – if we know we are able to buy a phone for cheaper, we won’t quote prices that are higher. We purchase stock from all over Europe and have a very long list of suppliers that we use.
What if I have been offered more for my device, will you pay more?
Everyday, we check 100’s of websites (including comparison sites) to ensure that we are paying the highest. Sometimes however, we may miss the odd one, we are human after all. We encourage all of our customers who see better prices available to let us know and give us the details of them – where we can beat them, we will! We do however want to make sure our customers are aware of other variables other than price, these include (but are not limited to):
- How long have they been around for? It’s very easy to set up a website, offer high prices and take in 1000’s of phones before disappearing into thin air. It’s very surprising how often we hear of this happening!
- What are their customers saying about them? Be sure check reviews on Google, Trustpilot and Yell before sending your phone in! Just one look will show you that the majority of high street mobile phone recyclers will entice you with high prices before slashing them when you receive a revised offer. Be sure to actually read the reviews and how the retailer responded to it too!
- How long do they take to pay? Yet another common thing we see being reported is companies advertising the fact that they pay the same day they test the device. Be wary of these claims! The majority of the time, the payment is sent on that day but takes up to 7 days before it reaches your account. When we send a payment, it is received that very same day.
What if I’m not happy with my revised offer?
If you’re unhappy with a revised offer that we have sent, we will return your device to you at absolutely no additional cost as long as you have been transparent when sending your device to us. Read our terms and conditions for more information on this. You are under absolutely no obligation to accept a revised offer, if you think it is too low then please request for it to be returned. Always check our competitors’ small prints for things like these – we check all of our competitors prices and their terms & conditions meaning that you don’t have to. 9/10 online recyclers will ultimately charge you to have your phone sent back to you.
How do you know this?
We’ve been recycling phones since 1999 – yep, you read that right, for over 2 decades! So you could definitely say that we know a thing or two about recycling used phones. We also mystery shop with all major recyclers both online and on the high street. We’ve found that the high street recyclers seem to be the most inconsistent as the vast majority of them have no transparency when it comes to their pricing or terms of purchase. We are always assessing the market in order to ensure our customers get the most competitive prices, terms of service and above all, a great experience!
