Rich Demiro here Rich on Tech with another interview. And this is the time when everyone is thinking about upgrading their iPhone, because Apple has announced that we will now get our look at the new iPhone on October thirteenth, twenty twenty, that's Tuesday, at ten am. They sent out an invitation to journalists, but anyone can watch it. This is their new virtual event that's happening from Apple Park.
And the tagline this time around was high Comma speed, which is most likely a nod to, of course, faster processors, but also the first time that iPhones will have those speedy or promise to be speedy five G connections. Here to discuss what to do with your current phone is Sarah Bean. She works with Swapa, one of the places where you can sell your existing phone for some cash. Sarah, thanks for joining me.
Hi Rich, thanks for having me today.
All right, so explain first off what swapa is, because I've always known Swapa to be kind of like the insider place where I guess more techies sell their stuff because you get higher amounts for your phone.
Yeah. Well, swapa is a user to user marketplace for gently used or like we as we like to say, Newish Tech. So we're a marketplace where you can buy both online and in person if you want to buy or sell a used device.
And so what's the difference between something like Swapa and like Gazelle or eBay.
Well, you can buy with confidence when you buy through Swapa. The biggest difference between us and other marketplaces is that we vet every item that is listed for sale. We require a lot of criteria to meet, and you can know that you are buying a safe device. Not all marketplaces do an Imicheck, for instance, that checks the fifteen digit number on an iPhone or on a phone in general. So this is important difference between US and other marketplaces.
So not only do you know as a buyer that it's a bit more secure, but it's also as a seller you're getting a little bit of a premium because you're going through some of these hoops. Well, let's talk about what to do with the iPhone, because I'm looking at the prices here and let's see. So I've got the iPhone eleven Pro Max that would get me about
seven hundred and eighty six dollars on Swapa. That sounds like a pretty good deal considering I paid about thirteen hundred for it, iPhone eleven Pro seven hundred dollars, iPhone eleven five twenty nine, ten S Max four seventy, iPhone ten R three sixty nine. Then down to the success swich. You're only going to get seventy three bucks for that one. Maybe better to give it to a child. So let's talk about how to prepare our phone. Number one, make
sure your device is eligible for sale? What does that mean?
So you want to check with your carrier to see whether your device is fully paid off, and you want to perform an IMI check to verify that your phone hasn't been reported lost or stolen. And Swap offers free IMEI checks to anyone on our site.
All right, now, this is a big one. Back up your phone. I know folks that generally, you know, sometimes they don't up their phone when they're using it. But if you're gonna sell it, you have to back it up. Now. This is interesting because as I'm talking to you, I'm checking on my phone because a lot of times people don't realize that their iCloud backup has not fully like if they're doing it iCloud, you know, which is wireless, generally your phone does that at night when you're asleep
and it's charging. But sometimes that doesn't happen because you know, you may not have a Wi Fi connection, you may not have enough storage in your iCloud. And as I talk to you, Sarah, I'm looking at my If you go into your settings Apple id iCloud and then you scroll down to iCloud backup, mine is actually turned off. I have no idea why my backup is turned off, but I'm gonna turn that on and make sure that my phone is backed up, because I'm surprised that that's
turned off. But anyway, check that that's backed up. And when it is on, it will give you the last date that your phone was backed up, so you can confirm that if it was the night before. You know, everything should be backed up and safe and sound now once your phone is bad. And I don't take that lightly because you want to like triple check that everything's
backed up. You can do that on your computer as well, which I'd probably recommend if you want like a real nice you know, a whole file of your whole phone, that's a nice way to do it as well. In addition to iCloud. The next step here is a factory reset. Why is that so important?
Yeah, you want to just when you sell a phone, you want to make sure that you know everything is wiped off of it. You don't want any of your personal information left over.
And that's why. Okay, so let's move on to the next one, which is clean your phone. So this is a big one, especially with COVID times.
Definitely. You know, if cleanliness wasn't important before, it certainly is right now that you know. We don't want to do any harsh chemicals around your phone, that sort of thing. You want to thoroughly clean the exterior of your phone, fully power down your phone, moisten a lent free cloth with soapy water, and gently wipe down your device.
Now it's interesting because for so many years people would ask me, you know, can I use alcohol on my phone? Can I use alcohol? And I'd say no, no, no. And then when the whole coronavirus thing happened, Apple actually came out and on their support page and said that you could use something like a Clorox wipe to clean
your phone. And I thought that was really interesting. So I'm going to actually go right to the Apple website and read you what they said is it okay to use a disinfectant on my Apple product, and it says using a seventy percent isopropyl alcohol wipe or Clorox disinfecting wipes, you may gently wipe the hard, non porous surfaces of your Apple products, such as a display, keyboard, or other exterior surfaces. Don't use bleach, avoid getting moisture in any opening,
and don't submerge your apple product in any cleaning agent. So, Sarah, we don't want to dunk this in some sort of you know, like a car wash bucket. You don't want to do that.
Absolutely not. No, you know, when it comes to cleaning, you know, less is more. I believe you want to make sure that you've done it in a safe way so it doesn't you know, affect the actual phone. And we recommend on our blog that you use a state damp lit free cloth.
Yeah, that really helps too. I've been wiping down my phone a lot more. I've also been using that the phone soap to disinfect my phone. But what's interesting about iPhones, and I sort of alluded to this at the beginning when I talked about some of these prices compared to other devices like an Android, they really don't lose a ton of their value over time. I mean, they're they're quite valuable for a while. Why do you think that is?
You know, I just think that they just really hold our value very well. And you can see on our site by when you look at the prices that's that's consistently the case.
And the other thing is that so many people keep these phones in a case and also a screen protector. So by the time it's, you know, generally time to sell your phone or hand it over to someone new, it almost feels like a new phone because we've kept it in such protective coverings and casings, right.
Correct, Yeah, I mean it's like anything. The more you take care of something, you know, the more you're going to get for it when you go to buy it or go to sell it.
All Right, So we talked a little bit about SWAPA. So explain to me the difference between going through something like swap and selling it yourself versus just handing it back to the carrier, because a lot of people are on that program where you can sell it back to your carrier. Do you get as much money for that?
No. We always tell people that you will get about twice as much for it when you sell it yourself, then when you trade it back to the carrier.
And what about the concern that people might have of well, am I actually going to get paid? Am I actually going to get money for this? They? I feel like a lot of people just default to the carrier because they don't want to have to deal with, you know, a problem. Send your money or you send your product and nothing happens. Is that a concern here when you're doing it yourself?
Well, not through Swapa because we have so many We have PayPal protections, we have a moderation team that is with you the whole step of the way, you know, and we verify. We have a certain you know, criteria you have to meet. So when you sell on Swapa, and that's what I can speak to, you can sell with confidence, you can buy with confidence because we know that we have all these protections in place.
And what about a commission to Swapa? Take a commission? How does that work?
Small fee for the buyer and it's built into the price.
Oh so the buyer pays it, not the seller.
Absolutely, that's what also sets us apart.
That's interesting. So you get the full amount basically on your end what about shipping a phone. I mean, not everyone is shipping electronics all the time. Is it easy to do that?
Yeah, you know a lot of people, you know, use the post office, they use other ways. That's usually negotiated between the buyer and the sellers how it's going to be done, and the seller of course would want to, you know, consider that when they're setting their price.
Or is it time for the upgrade for you?
I have an iPhone eight, so it is probably going to be time here soon. But you know, we also have four people on our plan, so that that makes a big difference. Of course too when you have all family of phones.
Well, it looks like you can get about one hundred and ninety nine dollars for your phone. So we don't know how much these new phones are going to cost, but I'm imagining, you know, we're looking at the thousand dollars range for some of the top of the line models, so you can you can get some money towards that. Sarah Bean with Swapa, thank you so much for chatting with me today. Can you tell folks how to find swap.
Absolutely go to our website swapa dot com. We have plenty of information, plenty of blog blog articles, and you can look up what your phone might be worth.
All right, thanks for coming on the podcast, and thanks to you for listening. If you have questions for me, you can always submit them to Hello at richon tech dot tv. I'm excited for the new iPhone. Let me know on social media what you're looking forward to. I'm at rich on tech. I'll talk to you real soon.