Is Refurbished Tech REALLY a Scam?
- Should you actually trust refurbished tech stores? On the channel, we've looked at a ton of these at this point, but today we're doing something a little bit different. I am pitting three of the biggest online tech refurbished stores: Gazelle, Back Market, and Reebelo head to head where I'm going to be buying items from all three stores, evaluating the condition of those items, and then selling it right back to that store to see if, first of all, they agree with the condition they sold to me in. And second of all, what kind of value I get.
Buckle up my friends 'cause I'm gonna be lighting some money on fire and hopefully finding something. Let's start out with Back Market. I would say they're one of the most trusted online refurbishers that I have actually tried. So I'm gonna buy an iPhone 12 from each of the three stores. The problem is, is that every store does this a little differently. Do I want a gently used screen or a flawless screen? I want a flawless screen in an almost flawless body.
I mean I do have a almost flawless body. - [Ken] Eh? - I am going to spend $215 for a iPhone 12, 64 gigabyte black model with a standard battery, which would be 80%+, an almost flawless body and a flawless screen. Now the other thing I'm gonna do for each store is buy a just random item to get a little bit of a sense for what values you're gonna get if you're not just buying and selling an iPhone 12. Retro, okay, how dare you put a PSP and call it retro? - [Ken] It is! - It's not! How about laptops? Let's look for a cheap laptop.
This is a MacBook Pro 16-inch from 2019. Ken, how much would you pay for a 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro? - $800. - $347. - [Ken] Wait, really? - This is a Core i7. So it's a slightly older model, of course.
Boy, they're gonna take $50 for the trade in on this. All right, with my items from Back Market in the cart, let me check out and see exactly what we're gonna be getting with our first store. So let's see how our beautiful Back Market items have arrived safe and sound.
I'm not even gonna breathe on these things. First up, we've got ourselves an actual package which moderately well-packed. Okay, okay, I'm about that.
Battery health, 100%. Oh, that's actually really lovely if that's actually true. All right, now I gotta just make sure that I am treating these things with the respect they deserve and I wanna give them no reason to ding me. You get like the light to catch it just right.
There's a lot of scuffs right here on the corner of the phone. But importantly, none of this is actually enough to like make it to like the anodized finish. I'll say for the body, yeah, almost flawless. Now, perfect screen, let's take a look at that. Well, snap, that's actually a pretty perfect screen. I mean, obviously, you need to turn it on, but tentative pass, I will say.
Like that actually is quite nice. Yeah, honestly, oh. - [Alex] Ah, ha ha! The downside. - Back Market actually seems to have delivered us a very, very high quality device here. I'm seeing really no reason to ding them.
All right, so the phone is set up. The first thing I wanna try is to check to see if the battery life is in fact 100% or, at the very least, above 80 like they claim. Battery health, 100%. On top of that, it doesn't show as a third-party battery.
Most of the time, when you replace an iPhone battery, it actually does flag it as a non-authentic battery. That's legitimately great. Like I would pay quite a bit more money for a phone with 100% battery compared to something an 80. It's a quick little camera test to make sure that the camera looks good, the auto focus is working and whatnot. But I think it's pretty safe to say that the Back Market iPhone 12 gets a huge thumbs up for quality, actually really, really, really solid.
Next up, let us evaluate the MacBook that we have purchased from Back Market. And refresh me again on this one. What was the condition that they specifically called out for this? - [Alex] This is in fair condition. - Fair, what the hell happened there? I haven't gotten it out yet.
- Whoa! - Look at this. Just literally just, Carnage on the side. Oh, and there's a dent on the top too. Yeah, fair is usually pretty, like it works, the end is kind of the usual way they describe that. Let me take off the white gloves for this.
This one does not deserve the white gloves. It buckled, it's gonna be kind of hard to see unless you see it in the light, but the entire bottom of the actual screen buckled. Okay, hinge, feels fine. Okay, all right, I'm not mad. There's definitely some dirt on the actual speakers here and around the keyboard. So it looks like they kind of cleaned it up but not really.
There's also some like dirt here. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. I'll just put that back. (Alex laughing) We do have 16 gigs of RAM. We have 512 gigs of storage. Particularly the battery, oh, 209 cycle count! That's actually really solid.
Let me do a quick little typing test just to make sure that all my keys are actually functional. Cool, yeah, no, no problem with this. So we did get a pretty reasonable deal on this MacBook, right? - [Alex] We paid $347. - Look, I bought a couple of Intel Macs the last few months and I'll say that Apple Silicon clearly an improvement.
However, I don't think anyone can argue this is not a lot of computer for less than 400 bucks. It is still fully supported by Mac OS for at least a hopefully another year or so. It could be better, but I'm curious to see what some of the other stores are going to have. In store, get it? Next up, let's purchase some technology from Reebelo.
Now Reebelo, while they're not maybe not quite as big as Back Market, they still have a pretty good selection of devices. iPhone 12, so it does say starting from 192. Every store's gonna do this a little differently.
So for Reebelo, I have four choices. Excellent will have minor scratches and minor signs of wear. I think excellent sounds like what we're looking for.
They do tell me that I get a standard battery, which I believe is 80%. We're gonna be paying $213, which is exactly $1 more than Back Market charge. Now while I'm here, let's take a look at some other stuff.
$600 for a used latte machine? (Alex laughing) Lot of iPhones here. Oh, that's all, those are all the deals. Should we do a Z Flip? I feel like Z Flips are like the perfect example of a phone that is potentially in questionable condition that they would just sell you as like new.
This is a Bora Purple 128 gig unlocked phone for $269 in excellent condition. So with our iPhone and Z Flip in the cart, let's take a closer look at what Reebelo has to offer. I'm sure this is gonna go super, super well and I believe that this is our Reebelo iPhone.
At least, it feels like, that feels like an iPhone, right? I would prefer to see an actual box or something that's a little bit more padding. - [Alex] So Reebelo describes excellent as, on the screen, minor scratches that are barely noticeable when the screen is off. And on the body itself, minor signs of wear and light scratches invisible from a 12-inch distance. - Oh yeah, I remember Reebelo, they called out the 12-inch thing. I remember I had a ruler on my damn forehead last time, didn't help. First of all, they've taped over the cameras for some reason, that's strange.
Holy Toledo, Batman. That is scratched as hell on the screen. They said that you're not supposed to be able to see this very well. Gloves coming off, you don't deserve the gloves. Oh my god, these stickers that leave residue, why? Why would you do this? I got that, ugh! Great, the body of the phone is fine.
I'll fire it up and see if it looks a little bit better once it's actually on. But excellent? Absolutely not. This is a phone that I'm gonna trade into them in excellent condition and they're gonna absolutely knock it down. Yeah, scratches here.
I see some of those scratches here. Let's take a look at the battery. The health is 100%. That's actually really lovely because Reebelo only claims 80% or more.
To be fair, an iPhone 12 battery is very cheap at this point. But I'm intrigued at how this, as well as the Back Market phone, are both showing up as a first-party battery or at least the phone is not detecting it being a third-party battery. Front-facing camera and this is a little check to make sure that the camera and specifically the video is working, which it seems to be looking fine. The overall condition of the phone, totally acceptable. The fact that it is a good battery is great. My issue is the screen.
The screen is quite heavily scuffed. It is not barely noticeable at 12-inch whatever. Like I can, I'm like right here, I can see the scratches. Reebelo, at least for the iPhone, this ain't looking too good.
Next up, let's take a look at what should be our Reebelo Z Flip. Now you'll probably know that I'm a dude who has evaluated a Z Flip or two in my day. Now this one was in good condition, fair condition? - Excellent condition. - Excellent condition. At least the packaging is better.
It is in an envelope and in a bubble-wrapped box. I dunno why, something just seems, feels menacing about when you put on gloves. - [Alex] It could just be cleaning up in general. - [Adriana] Or it's cold out.
- [Alex] Yeah, what's up with that? - Oh yeah, gloves work for your hands for normal circumstances too. I only use 'em after nefarious things, anyway. So it does show as 96% battery health, which is very lovely. A lot of scuffs on the top part of the glass. So this is all glass here on a Z Flip.
But this is matte and I'll say that the matte finish actually takes scratches pretty well. Ooh! There is a huge scratch right across the camera lens. Three of the four corners are kind of scuffed.
So I think what happened was the phone was probably closed, fell like this, because they're sort of matching scuff marks on this and all up and down on the cameras. Yeah, the excellent, really? Some of the finish on the edges here, it's actually worn off. Like it's not even scratched, like it's just worn straight off.
A little bit on the sides here too. So they've removed the screen protector, which I don't like to see, but probably 'cause it was all scuffed. So I guess my main questions would be making sure that the screen is fully functional, it looks nice. And then, making sure that the ultra-wide camera is also fully up and running.
I am not happy with this if I'm honest with you. Excellent? Like next to no, you know, cosmetic damage, blah blah blah, like that's just not what we're looking at here. So I'm gonna take a photo on the 1x. And then, we're gonna use the ultra-wide. This is the video sample from the main sensor on the Z Flip, which should look fine, but now I'm gonna flip over the ultra-wide and let's see if we can find any of those imperfections with that lens. I'm actually gonna go ahead and step specifically into this light.
And I'm immediately seeing, do you kind of see some of the haloing here? Do you see how it looks kind of soft? Move over to the 1x. Look at that. Look, it's almost gone, right? I don't know if I would say that this is something that a lot of people are gonna notice if I'm being entirely honest with you.
But this is a functional issue with the phone. This ain't it. Next up, our good, old friend Gazelle. So they've actually completely rebranded their website as well as they've gotten a shiny new logo compared to the last time I looked at it.
Gazelle are one of the very few companies who actually reached out after I did my video and they wanted to try to improve things. Let's see if they made some improvements compared to last time. And the very first thing I see, iPhone 12 unlocked for 64 gigabytes. I would say let's try good, which is the screens are in very good condition with light scuffs. And at $227, that is a little bit more expensive than the other two.
However, let's take a look. Good condition, iPhone 12 64 gig in the cart. Next, let's see about other devices. So they got Stampede sale. I'm gonna stampede my way down to pick up an iPhone 13. That's it, what? Almost look at iPads and maybe like a Pixel.
Ooh, some of these prices are bad. They want almost $560 for Pixel 9? Ooh, oh, that's some of these, ugh. An iPad 10 for $435? Okay, so the iPad 9, while it's got the older school design, still has like a relatively decent chip inside. $210 does not strike me as a particularly good deal though. So, sure, so with my iPhone as well as iPad in the cart, let's take a look at what Gazelle have to offer. But while I'm here, I'm also gonna pick up one additional device, which we're going to save for, well, let's just say Gazelle is not quite as straightforward as the other sites.
Why does this package say it weighs one pound? I mean, I know I'm incredibly strong and handsome, but not a one-pound box. Anyway, so this should be our iPhone 12. Nice packaging, I will say. Gazelle has some actual foam in here. That actually, I will say out of all three, this is the cleanest one. The camera lenses are importantly clean.
There's some minor little, little scuffs by the power button, but I mean absolutely clean as heck. And the screen itself is also very good. Wow, this is an excellent quality device. I don't want to necessarily, oh, that's almost dead, so you plug it in.
Assuming that battery is good, cameras work and everything, this is actually looking like the best condition phone we've got here. So battery health is 100%. Hold on, do we really get three iPhone 12s, all from different companies who claimed 80% or better? And they're all brand new, supposedly first-party batteries? Especially because we didn't pay for a brand new battery. So a little camera test of our Gazelle iPhone 12.
I mean, look. I will say that while the Back Market iPhone looked really good, this is just better. And now mind you, it was $10 more and the condition actually made it seem worse. But it is absolutely flawless on the outside and it has the brand new battery.
I'm surprised to say that this is actually a really pretty high-quality device. Next up from Gazelle, we have an iPad. I dunno know why I didn't realize this, but iPads that are still supported on iPad OS still have a lot of value. So this is an iPad 9th generation, which was also in good condition, right? - [Alex] Yes, this was $210. - Lot of money. Let's take a look.
Oh, op, op. I feel like I've put on and take off the glove a lot today. The body of the device pretty clean. Yeah, there's some minor little wear and tears, some minor scuffs. There's a little scratch here, but it's on the bezel, I don't care.
Very, very solid, like really, really nice looking. All right, we are into iPad OS. The screen looks to be totally fine.
It's really a difficult thing to double-check the actual battery. I have to trust their word that this is a newish battery. Over here, take a selfie.
Look at how wide the front-facing camera on the iPad is. This is like their center stage camera, right? I didn't think that the iPad 9 had this. - [Alex] They have an 8 megapixel wide camera. - That's actually pretty good. I will say I am very pleasantly surprised by Gazelle.
This is significantly better than the last time we took a look at them. So now it is time to trade our devices in. Now importantly, I'm not going to be returning any of these devices. Instead, I'm trading it in just as if I had a random iPhone on the shelf that I wanted to send in to Back Market and get some cash for. Now, there are a couple things I'm looking for here. Theoretically, if I bought something in excellent shape, it should also grade as excellent.
On top of that, I wanna see what kind of values I can get. So if I bought an item for $200, obviously no one's gonna gimme $200 to buy it back, but are they gonna give me $150, $100, $50? Let's find out. All right, so we're gonna start with Back Market with their trade-in. How does the screen look? So we have four options. Cracked, used, good, or flawless.
Flawless screen 'cause that's what they sold it to me as. So, we'll see. Now, if I remember right, it was good condition for the body, right? - [Alex] It was almost flawless for the body. - Wait, almost flawless? Well, that's not one of my options.
- [Ken] I think the play should be to go higher because people would always want to put it in for more money anyway. - They're going charge me. - [Ken] They're going to evaluate you anyway, right? - Sure, now for context, I pay $212 for this iPhone. For Back Market, we get $130. Okay, that's fine.
I think they're probably gonna ding me like 10 bucks, whatever on the sides. I'm selling it in as close of conditions as I bought it in. So I will accept the offer.
Next up, let's trade in our MacBook Pro. I purchased this laptop in fair which, you know, clearly had some cosmetic issues, but they're asking me first about screen. I gotta get a little creative here because there's nothing about the screen that was mentioned when I purchased it. I would actually say the screen's pretty much flawless, right? There is no problem with the screen, the problems are with the body. How do the sides and back look? Okay, so I bought in fair condition, I will say used, which would be visible signs of wear, including deep scratches and/or dents on the outside of the device, which do not affect its functionality, no cracks. So I purchased this laptop for $347 and my offer is 241.
You know what? I'm gonna say, Back Market's offers, if they actually come through and they don't ding me, are pretty reasonable. All right, next up, let's take a look at Reebelo. Let's start out with iPhone 12. Starting out with what is my storage capacity? 128 gigs. - [Alex] We got 64 for everything.
- [Presenter] It was at this moment he knew he (duck quacks) up. - Hmm, condition of the screen. - [Alex] So they call excellent as, on the screen, minor scratches that are barely noticeable when the screen is off. - Okay, well then minor scratches seems like the way to do that.
How about the back and the corners? - [Alex] Minor signs of wear and light scratches invisible from 12 inch distance. - Okay, what I'm seeing so far is that there's not a great level of consistency between what you're buying, what you're selling, as far as how they describe these conditions. I'm actually gonna go back. I'm actually gonna say the back is in flawless condition. So I spent $213 on the phone and they are going to give me $165.
- [Alex] Are you sure you got that one right this time? - Yes, that seems suspiciously high. Next, let's do our Z Flip. So it was a flawless screen. So I'm gonna just try to keep it consistent with the iPhone. I'm gonna say minor scratches. So I paid $269 for this.
My trade-in offer is 164. Okay, that feels a little bit more like it. Maybe Reebelo just really wants some iPhone 12s. Next up, let's take a look at Gazelle.
Fast, easy, safe, I hope so. So here are the iPhones that they will accept. So I'm gonna pick up my iPhone 12.
First question, does it turn on? Actually, I'm glad they asked that first because for all the other stores go, is it flawless condition? Perfect, perfect, perfect. And at the end, they go, does it work? And you can say no. I will say yes to all of these answers. When we inspect your device, if it's in better condition than you thought, we'll increase your offer. So after spending $227 on my phone, my Gazelle offer is $100.
(everyone laughing) You know what's also crazy? Damaged or broken is $72 and the lightly use is 100. iPad, iPad, iPad. And the overall condition of this one, I think should probably also be lightly used. I bought this iPad for, I don't remember. - [Alex] 210. - I bought this iPad for $210, thanks Alex.
Anyone wanna take a guess on what they're gonna give me? - [Alex] $100? - $100? - [Ken] 99. - [Adriana] $71. - I think you're gonna be spot on there. - $90 actually, I think.
No. - Yes. - You were closest, right? Technically. (Austin laughing) All right, so it is time to ship our devices in to Back Market, Gazelle, and Reebelo? It's exactly what values and conditions we get, but while we wait for those to arrive and get our lovely Vbucks in return, we have one mystery item that's gonna require us to take a bit of a field trip. Let me introduce you my friends to ecoATM. So this is the same company as Gazelle.
So while Gazelle focus on buying and selling stuff online, ecoATM is a physical in-person kiosk that you'll find at places such as grocery stores, Walmarts, malls. In my opinion, a lot of devices that come to Gazelle actually come from ecoATM. So I purchased one additional iPhone 12 for this experiment. So this is the same 64 gig iPhone 12 that we've been using as our control phone, except I did get it in green just so it would be a little different. It is also in good condition and I bought this from Gazelle for $233.
Now I'll say that the condition is pretty accurate. There's a pretty deep scratch right here on the actual display and it barely squeaks in with only 81% capacity on the battery. So let's head inside this Walmart, put this in the ecoATM, let's see if it's actually a better idea to drop it off in person or if they give me somehow even less.
All right, what do I wanna do? Enter a code if you've done already done it online. Recycle to just get rid of it. Or price and sell. I wanna do that.
You don't wanna be in this category. Oh, I already got a label. Ooh, oh and the cable's actually already there. Okay, that's cool. Bye, little buddy, see you later.
It actually seems to do a pretty good job of just making this a very seamless like easy process. Oh hey, oh no. Well, I guess we've learned something today. I feel like I definitely turned $230 into $83 about as fast if I was in Las Vegas.
Are they trying to upsell me on like a payday loan or something right now? That was a phone, that was a phone. Well, it was in good condition. Is it paying me $5 bills right now? I think it paid me in $5 bills. I have an idea where we could take a bunch of $5 bills.
- [Ken] Oh. - What are we going for? I should've probably looked before I put my money in. - [Ken] Shadow.
- Shadow? He's too far away, I don't think so. - No, no, no. I got you. - You think so? - [Ken] I got you, I got you. - Okay, okay, it does actually look pretty good. - Oh, it's a scam.
- $82, we got $82. There is an advantage, to be fair, of getting your cash now. I don't have to wait. So I actually just this morning dropped off all of our packages to go to Back Market, Gazelle, and Reebelo.
And that process is gonna take a week, probably, maybe two weeks. That being said, I bought this one for 230 bucks and gave it back to them at 83. Not great, but hopefully, you're learning some valuable lessons about financial decisions, and importantly, deciding to subscribe to the Austin Evans channel and ringling the dingling button for some high-quality investigative journalism. Like why are there a bunch of toothpicks in the middle of this Walmart parking lot? And so my friends, it is time to bring this video to a conclusion by taking a look to see what happened with each of the stores after we shipped in our items. So with Back Market, specifically with our iPhone 12, we purchased for $212.
They gave us an offer of $130. And once they evaluated the item, they gave us $130. No notes, they accepted it, no question.
Immediately, we take a turn for the worst. So we bought our MacBook from Back Market for $347. Now they gave us an offer of $241 for the trade-in.
When they received it, they said that quote, "This screen is cracked." And instead of $241, they offered us 120. (quirky music) Does anyone have a reaction to that? - What? Whoa! - But we specifically! But we shipped it back to them in the exact shipping that they sent it to us. - They did take some photos of the damage, but the damage was the exact damage that it had when I bought it. When I denied it, they immediately said, "Yep, no problem, we'll ship it back to you." I don't, that does not look like it's flickering or cracked to me.
Well, so they clearly did set it up because they made an admin account, which has no password on it, what? - Um. - Probably 1234. - It actually is 1234. Oh, okay. (Adriana gasping) I think, can we all just look at this and say that that is not cracked and not flickering, right? Is that pretty fair to say? - Yes, that looks fine. - I think what we've got here is just a case of they saw this damage and they just said, "Oh, that needs to be replaced." They didn't wanna resell it.
Maybe don't sell it to me with this dent. Which brings us to Reebelo. So the iPhone 12 that we purchased from Reebelo for $213 initially at a almost a surprisingly high offer of 165 bucks, by far the highest offer of any of the iPhone 12s we bought. Well, once they received it, they gave me a counter offer of $100 because it was quote, "used."
And to be fair, it was a little bit scuffed, but I was just trying to trade in the same kind of condition that I bought it in. That's not the worst part though. We also trade in our Z Flip 4, which I'll remind you, I purchased from Reebelo for $269 and they quoted me $164. They counteroffered me when they received it and looked at the condition at $47. - Whoa, whoa, whoa. - 47? - Excuse me? - Not $147, 4-7.
It was quote, "damaged with an aftermarket frame." I don't know what they mean by an aftermarket frame. I don't think you can even easily swap the frame on a Z Flip. It certainly did not look aftermarket to me.
- [Alex] You mean the $269 excellent condition phone that they sold us? - Yeah, it's actually a complete pile of junk and it is a completely unsellable. Reebelo gets the biggest of hell no's that I could possibly give. Now it comes to Gazelle, when you look at our iPhone 12, we purchased it for $227 in good condition and we got an offer of $100. And once they actually got the phone, well, we got $100. No notes, they accepted it, no problem.
Last but not least, we have our iPad 9th generation, which we purchased for $210 from Gazelle. They gave us an offer of $90 and the final total was $90. So what are our conclusions here? Well, everything was kind of bad. Back Market was kind of the best. The MacBook situation was bad, but the very least I could say no, I didn't actually lose anything 'cause they paid for shipping both there and back.
And they did legitimately give us a lot more for our iPhone than any of the other stores. Reebelo absolutely ripped us off. Gazelle was fine, although the offers were very low, but at least it was a seamless experience. Maybe refurbishers, if I could give you a word of advice, if you sell me a device in great condition and then I trade it in, you try to tell me it's not in great condition, hey, maybe don't do that. I'm curious, what do you think about this very lengthy trade-in investigation? Would you use any of these companies or should I instead bring my phones to GameStop and get some V bucks for 'em? - [Adriana] That's what Steve Jobs died for. - That is the most final line of a video I've ever heard in my life.
(Adriana and Austin laughing)
2025-05-31 06:14
