SwappaReviews 3,179

I'm very pleased with the service, I live outside the USA and was able to buy a cell phone. I just bought an IPHONE for my wife in EBAY, I regret I did not buy it in swappa.

As I write this review it is December 6,2015.

I purchased two phones classified as "mint" on Swappa in September 2015. One of them has a microphone that stopped working after 2 weeks even though the phone was not dropped or mishandled. The seller informed me that they have a 7 day return policy, although that was not listed. After lots of complaints, they agreed to repair the phone if I paid for shipping to them, which I did. After that they demanded I also pay to ship it back and when it finally arrived IT WAS NOT FIXED!. The microphone now worked, but it would not charge. They would not work with me after that point. This has been a 3 month insane ordeal that I would not wish upon anyone.

Now, this problem could happen if you purchased a phone on the street corner. Somehow I thought Swappa would actually protect its customers from problems like this. But they have done nothing except write messages essentially saying "you two should really work this out yourselves, we can't get involved". So they are really not providing any value as I can find plenty of phones on Craigslist that provide no purchase protection.

This place is the worse place I have ever used to buy a product. I had the worse experience buying one device and selling one device. I will not use it ever again and I recommend you to stay away from this place. When I did my first purchase in swappa I received the item not as described as in the description. And broke several of swappa's policies. I asked for swappa to help with this and they did absolutely nothing! When I sold a device here now the opposite happened I sold a device and the buyer requested to give him a $50 refund for the item not being as described. This is an absolutely joke! I lost so much money using this place that I could have buy a new item from a retail store for the same price. STAY AWAY!

The site only takes reviews from Buyers, BUT not sellers.
And. Buyers can leave the reviews many many days after the transaction is completed, and there is no way for sellers to rebut the transaction.
Sellers are REQUIRED to ship within 2 days of the transaction.
The biggest issue is that the sellers have absolutely no protection from anything the buyer may say - the burden of proof is one-sided.

Poorly conceived business - that is why eBay sells 50-100X more second hand phones as these people

OK - So, seems to be a site created by some juveniles to match buyers and sellers. One would think that such a site would bring value to the Buyers and Sellers that eBay or other such sites do not bring already - Nope! Search around, and you'll find both Buyers and Sellers are frustrated.

So, I thought maybe they bring expertise about mobile phones to the table - considering they've linked up with XDA. Nope! The moderators/Swappa staff is as juvenile as it gets - they have NO CLUE about the technical aspects of what they're selling - no expertise that would provide value to the community. Their behavior is as inconsistent and as clueless as can be expected from juveniles. An example? See the assumptions made below. On top of it, their fees are much higher than eBay for the typical phone they sell.

I can't imagine they'll last too long. There is only negativity all around this company

Between getting burnt on eBay and wasting time selling on Craigslist, I had finally decided that it just wasn't worth it to sell my used devices. After hearing about Swappa at a conference a few years ago, I decided to give it a shot and ended up experiencing a hassle free sale. Over the last several years, I've sold probably 10 devices (bought one) and each time, the sale process has been remarkably painless.

I started using Swappa because of issues with eBay's policies and expensive fees after reading about it on XDA. So far, in the last 3 years, I've had 9 successful transactions as a seller. 9 with absolutely no issues. I have made 1 purchase from Swappa which was extra successful. I'm not really sure what the negative reviews are about. I've never even had buyers ask for returns.

The best part is: it's easy. As a buyer, what you see is what you pay. So if it says $200, it's $200. Most sellers are also willing to negotiate with you in the comments. They also have a policy where sellers must ship within 2 days of the purchase.

Another thing: If you email Swappa staff, they email you back usually within minutes. While they are there to moderate the sale page, I truly believe they want both the buyer and seller to be happy based on my interactions with them. Oh, and it's helpful that they review every listing beforehand to check that it's safe and the ESN is clean and free from financing.

Thanks for many successful transactions and many more to come, Swappa team!

I've been using Swappa to buy and sell for almost 5 years. I'm not a business, just a hobbyist, and have used Swappa for just under 180 transactions total. Some of the complaints I'm seeing here on Sitejabber sound way off, to be totally honest, and have to be the vocal minority. For example...

1) I've never had a problem with any of my customer service interactions. They've always been helpful and professional.

2) I've had an almost 100% success rate in all my transactions with few misunderstandings after the fact. Those complaining about their devices being in poor shape must not have looked or asked enough questions before buying.

3) Their ESN check digs deeper than any other one I've seen and provides way more protection than Ebay or especially Craigslist. I don't know of another one that shows you financing info for the carriers that share it (mainly T-Mobile I think).

4) I saw one review complain about Swappa not allowing you to show your ESN in the listing, while Ebay will. Scammers scour the internet for public ESN's to use for their scams. Swappa is protecting their users by not allowing that. Swappa is also protecting buyers by having strict guidelines for listing, unlike Ebay and Craigslist.

Those are just a few examples. No business is perfect all the time and I'm not trying to say that. But I'm a pretty experienced user of Swappa and pretty experienced at buying/selling used devices. Nowhere else do I have a flat $10 fee (for buying, not selling) and the protection that Swappa provides combined into one service.

Feel free to ask me anything.

I've been selling devices on Swappa for the past 2 to 3 years and I never had a bad experience. They always take care of me and the process is really simple. It's only a $10 fee for posting any cellular device. It's safe secure and I recommend to everyone. Another good thing about the site is before you can post your phone to sell you have to submit your IMEI. So if your device is locked to a carrier or financed you won't be able to sell it.

Do not ever use this site for selling your phones/devices. If you have a dispute with a buyer, they take the side of the buyer automatically without investigating further. I sold a phone in mint condition to a buyer, who claimed that it was scratched and dented, which was a complete lie. He tried to get a "partial" refund, to get the phone for cheaper. So, the site escalated the issue to Paypal, who now says that I have to give a refund for the phone which is coming back to me in unknown condition from a buyer who was trying to scam me out of money. NEVER NEVER NEVER use this site. As a seller, you have no protection.

I've purchased devices twice on Swappa and sold once. Both times I purchased, the item I received was less than described. Buying via Swappa is absolutely, positively NO BETTER than eBay--probably worse. EBay at least has its own protection system in place as an additional layer before PayPal has to be involved. Via Swappa, as other reviewers have stated, you're pretty much on your own. I feel confident that my most recent bad experience will be found in my favor, but it's probably going to take 3-4 weeks for all that crap to run its course. The people who run Swappa are laughing all the way to the bank on the $10 per sale fee. I bet they don't have 10 people working for them. Save your time and money and buy your stuff on eBay, Amazon... even craigslist would be better than this.