How to sell cell phone on ebay

September 5, 2007 5:40 PM

I no longer need my near-new Motorola SLVR L7C from Cricket. I want to sell it on ebay, but what should(n't) I do to maximize the resale value?

Should I unlock the phone via unlockitnow.com? If I do, how do I write my ebay listing? (Will it work on any CDMA network? Or will it only work on Cricket? Which are the CDMA networks?)

I'm looking for a little hand-holding here. I just want to sell this phone without pissing a) away my cash or b) off whomever buys it.

(whimpering thanks)

posted by Moistener to technology (6 comments total)

I'm in the US, and not familiar w/ Cricket in any way.

But as someone who has sold a few dozen personal items on ebay, the best advice I can give you is to search for phones similar to yours on ebay. Especially look at the Completed auctions. The ones with the price in green are the ones which completed successfully. Sort by price, highest first. Read all of them. Then just emulate what they've done in creating your own auction. If only the unlocked phones generate top dollar, unlock yours (can CDMA phones even be unlocked??).

That's how everyone learns to sell on ebay.
posted by Bradley at 6:25 PM on September 5, 2007

Thx. By hand-holding, I was referring to the "cell phone unlock scene" part.
posted by Moistener at 6:57 PM on September 5, 2007

Alltel and Verizon are the main players in the CDMA game. Sprint is also CDMA, but as far as I know they don't play too well together with the other two. (I could be wrong on that.)

Alltel and Verizon have network sharing agreements with each other. However, their phones can't always be programmed to work with each other; I was looking to use my Alltel phone with a Verizon MVNO, and they said that that model just wouldn't program for the Verizon network. Some people have not been able to get any Alltel phones to work on Verizon.

I would head over to howardforums.com and see if they have any answers for you. Some of the guys there know way too much about cell phones. Since a lot of these guys switch providers a lot (especially on the pre-paid forums), they often know which phones will play nice on which networks.

I don't know about unlocking CDMA phones. I'm not sure that they can be unlocked. GSM is nice, but you can't beat CDMA for coverage in the boonies.

Chances are, though, that someone on eBay is looking for a phone they can use because they lost or broke theirs. You should be OK; just do the research on what these phones are going for first.
posted by azpenguin at 7:04 PM on September 5, 2007

Honestly, I've not be a fan of eBay for 10 years or so. There's going to be a lot of competition from wholesalers selling the same phone new for a tiny tiny profit.

My recommendation is to go local and use Craigslist. While it's sometimes annoying to weed through the scam emails from people, it's not very hard to instantly spot them unless this is your first day on the internet.

Craigslist will greatly ease the after-sale process as well since shipping will be easier or unnecessary and you may be able to just grab simple hard cash since that's a low-ticket item.
posted by travis vocino at 7:07 PM on September 5, 2007

Second travs vocino on Craigslist, but if you can't get more than the ebay listing fee, final value fee, and (one assumes) paypal payment fee, go for eBay!

It's especially great if you're good at writing literate descriptions and adding great pictures. Especially worthwhile if you have, say, the original manual, the original receipt, its box, or if it has some sort of technical support that will be transferred to the next user.

Seeing what everything else is going for is a good rule of thumb, but if you can write a good descriptions, have great pictures, have some of the above, and are lucky, you can sell well above the average. Last week I sold a 3 y/o laptop for 95% of what I paid for it.

But try craigslist first.
posted by arnicae at 8:13 PM on September 5, 2007

Your best bet is to advertise and sell it as a Cricket phone. You can't unlock a CDMA device like you could if it were a GSM phone. Don't waste your money.

The buyers who want to move it to other carriers will know exactly what they need to do if they want to take it to another carrier. In fact, people all over the world buy up cheap prepaid handsets and re-sell them in order to make a quick dime. (Cricket is actually one of the few American prepaid carriers that will blindly activate other prepaid handsets. The other prepaid carriers hate them for this.)

The problem with moving from carrier to carrier with a CDMA phone is that the ESN of the device must be "clean"--meaning not provisioned to some one else on the same carrier (or marked as stolen, damaged, etc)-- and it also has to be recognized by the carrier.

Howardforums will provide some more insight if needed. But, as I said, just advertise it as a Cricket SLVR and you'll make a sell.
posted by jivesoul at 9:34 PM on September 5, 2007