5 ms·

These trade-in values are laughable[1]. You are better off selling on eBay. Microsoft does sure know their Apple laptop models though [1] https://microsoftsurf

• invokestatic 10y ago
  It's just Microsoft-branded CEXCHANGE.
• gist 10y ago
  > You are better off selling on eBay. Great! Why don't you come here and do all that work for me! (Sorry just a snarky lead in for my commentary). I try to avoid selling at ebay if at all possible. I did just sell an iphone 6 and honestly if you don't sell regularly it's a bit of work plus you have fees and have to worry about the buyer complaining. In my case they wrote to me saying that they thought it was a 6 plus and would I take it back if they paid shipping? (No was no returns) So the withheld feeback and filed a complaint with ebay. It went in my favor (obviously it was listed correctly) however the entire experience I would have rather avoided and it took time and effort and writing to clear it up. The advantage of a trade in program like this is if you are not trying to squeak out the last dollar in value you don't have to worry as much when you ship the item that everything is 100% perfect. Edit: Of course the money does matter so I am talking in general about selling on ebay of course I'd see exactly what the delta was taking into account all fees and time involved.
  • massysett 10y ago
    I will never sell on eBay again and I don't even need to see what the delta is. Ebay is full of non-paying bidders and people waiting to rip you off. I sold a Thinkpad on ebay. I kept getting bidders from foreign countries even though I specified that I wanted bids from my country only. Why can't ebay screen these out? One winning bidder emailed me and said "I don't want this anymore." Ok, you just wasted my 7-day auction, thanks. Another bidder simply did not pay. Sellers get more on ebay because selling there is such a pain that a considerable premium is necessary to justify it. Maybe it's worth it for strange collectibles. For a commodity like an Apple computer? Never worth it. I would sell to Gazelle or MS and be happy with the huge discount.
    • ghufran_syed 10y ago
      I haven't sold on there for a while, but it sounds much worse than it used to be. Can't you filter by number of positive reviews?
      • Scoundreller 10y ago
        Not very well. I wish I could restrict my items to users with 50+ feedback, but I think Ebay fears everyone would do that.
      • robbiemitchell 10y ago
        Worth pointing out two things: - Sellers cannot leave negative feedback on buyers - A common fraud technique is for a scammer to take over the account of someone with a good history (i.e., hack into it)
    • Scoundreller 10y ago
      Ebay's solution to non-paying bidders is to allow sellers to "Require immediate paypal payment to purchase". And you can restrict your shipping options on a (mostly) country-by-country basis. Though that hasn't stopped me from getting queries about shipping to high-fraud countries. Items typically sell for more on a fixed-price basis, don't bother with auctions unless you need the money fast.
      • massysett 10y ago
        I restricted my shipping options. Still got bids from other countries. I required immediate Paypal. There is nothing to enforce this. Got two nonpaying winners. Ebay auctions are completely worthless. Ebay could fix these problems: actually screen bids by country. Take a bid deposit. They obviously do not care about fixing it. If I were to sell on ebay again, I would never use an auction. But even without auctions, people can still run scams. Forget it. For a small seller ebay is not worth it. Maybe businesses find it worth it to deal with all the crap on ebay.
        • 10y ago
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• lukewink 10y ago
  you are also better off selling your old car yourself instead of taking the dealer's trade-in offer. That doesn't stop a lot of people from doing things the easy way and potentially missing out on hundreds/thousands of dollars.
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    Hey, no dealership is going to call you back in a couple weeks talking about lemon laws and demanding a refund.
    • hsitz 10y ago
      I don't think anybody can if you sell a used car as its owner. As far as I know, used car lemon laws apply only to cars sold by used car dealers.
      • dleslie 10y ago
        Anyone can pick up a phone.
      • emodendroket 10y ago
        I don't know the details of the law but I was under the impression that you can be sued as a private seller for misrepresenting the car in a negligent way (and obviously "negligence" can be in the eye of the beholder). I guess "lemon law" is not the term to use.
  • achow 10y ago
    $50 'coupon' on trading in 13" Macbook Pro in working condition (!).
• fletchowns 10y ago
  Selling something on eBay can be such a huge pain in the ass. I wouldn't be surprised if people were willing to pay for the convenience of doing it through Microsoft.
  • emodendroket 10y ago
    Doubly true if you're the kind of person who owns a Macbook Pro and is considering buying a Surface.
  • illuminati1911 10y ago
    Probably still much less pain in the ass than switching from MacBook to a Surface laptop. If they just gave the cash it would be different but now you actually have to buy that.
  • ndesaulniers 10y ago
    As a seller, unless you're doing $1k+ business a year, you have next to no protections as a seller. Was almost scammed trying to sell my MBP. Not worth ever selling anything of value eBay ever again.
• Scoundreller 10y ago
  They sure do hold their value: I'll be parting out my 2011 Macbook Air, and I'll only be out ~US$200 after purchasing a new 2015 Macbook Air. Details: 3 months ago, I bought a new Macbook Air to replace my mid-2011 for CAD$1300 incl taxes (Approx US$1000). They had an academic discount-promo for a free-pair of Dre Beats BT headphones, which I promptly Ebay'd for CAD$230. I'm parting out my mid-2011 Air now on Ebay for CAD$950 total, and that's excluding a $40 part I broke, a worn-out battery, and a destroyed power adapter. So, after 4 years, I practically traded in my old Macbook for a new one for $100 (excl Ebay and shipping costs, but still). They hold their value, and people bother to repair broken 5 year old models.
  • tomcam 10y ago
    OK, you have me intrigued. How do you part out a MacBook air?
    • ndesaulniers 10y ago
      maybe they mean part with not part out?
      • Scoundreller 10y ago
        No, part-out, just like most laptops, there is a liquid spare parts market for people that fix units with a broken this or that. People like to drop/spill on their laptops, and metal isn't very forgiving :) See my post above.
    • Scoundreller 10y ago
      With a few Torx screwdrivers and a Pentalobe screwdriver I bought from Ebay for $2 from Hong Kong. Easiest laptop I ever took apart. Very intuitive. I could put the whole thing back together if I wanted to, which is nearly impossible with non-Macs once taken apart. It took 3 hours to take it apart and list everything, and I was doing other tasks at the time. Since all the parts are specially designed for Apple, they design for easy assembly, and therefore easy disassembly. They're not trying to hodge-podge a commodity SSD into their system by putting it in a housing held by 4 more screws. 1 screw for SSD. 10 for case. 1 for wifi. 6 for logic board. 6 for LCD. 3 for fan. Since Macs are popular, there are lots of guides on ifixit, down to the "Take out this cable by lifting up this part, then pulling it out in this direction", along with high-res photos. A popular system also means a liquid market for spare parts. Apple has high standards and is notoriously incompatible with non-approved parts, so repairers prefer buying a used Apple component instead of 3rd-party parts when available. Since Apple keeps a tight control on its suppliers, often the only spare parts are available from donors. For non-Apple systems, you can often find a manufacturer still selling new replacement parts, but not so for Macs. Lots of people out there will buy broken systems and then buy a replacement LCD or trackpad or logic board to bring it back to 100% and profitably re-sell it. Rough Ebay value of each part: Logic board - US$200 SSD - US$80 LCD assembly - US$300 (even with a few dents/scratches, people break these things and replace. Even if you can buy the LCD panel itself, buying the whole assembly makes repair so much easier) Palmrest/KB/touchpad assembly - US$50 (same story: easier to buy the whole assembly rather than replace just the trackpad) Bottom case - US$20 Wifi card - US$15 Set of screws - US$9 1 flex cable - US$7 Total: US$681 Actual selling prices may end up being 10-20% less, but I like to start my prices high, then lower it every few weeks until sold. As I said, price would be higher if battery wasn't dead, I didn't break a part off the power board and if the power adapter wasn't fraying).
• vnglst 10y ago
  50 dollars for my Macbook Pro Retina?! No thanks. I must be worth more than that.