Buying Used

Greetings, I am submitting this to let anyone who may be looking to buy a used phone to save some money know of my experience. I have purchased several flagship Samsung Galaxy phones over the past few years because I like the devices but can't afford the ridiculous prices and a lot of money can be saved by buying used. I stay away from sites such as Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace because, although there are legitimate listings, they are completely saturated with scammers. It's just too much of a hassle from my perspective, than it's worth to deal with all the lowlife scammers in order to find an actual real seller. I find this to be consistent no matter what kind of merch you may be looking for and I especially learned my lesson about selling anything on those kind of sites as well. If you have had a different experience, than good for you and unless it's happened consistently, which I would find quite hard to believe, then you may have just been lucky. And that is based on a fair amount of experience on my part personally so I just don't bother with them anymore to save myself from headaches.
Anyway, with that said now on to more successful experiences. I have bought and sold several devices, as well as other things such as high end audio equipment, laptops, and game systems through several online used equipment sites. I use device specific sites because they offer more specific details and there is more support and knowledge as well as better resources than the big sites like Amazon and Ebay. So for phones the sites I have used are Swappa, Back Market, and Wamatek. There are others but out of a dozen phones I've purchased this way, those are the ones that always come up with the best results as far as pricing vs. availability and condition so those are the only ones that I have personal experience with. Swappa is the only one I have sold a phone on, the rest I have sold privately to people I know. No reason there, that's just how things have worked out, however the one phone I did sell on Swappa was a pleasant and hassle free experience. As far as I know they are also the only one which allows for local connections which saves you the fee they charge to sell your device for you which I found to be pretty cool and I was lucky enough to have a local buyer contact me so that's how that one worked out.
As far as buying goes, all the phones I got from Swappa and Back Market were mint condition user to user sales or refurbished by their in house techs and all were great phones. The phones I have purcased tis way were all some variant of a Galaxy S9, S9+, Note 9, Note 10, S20, 0r Note 20.
Last Jan, about a year ago, I went in to the local Xfinity store to pay my internet bill because of a lost debit card and resulting failed payment and while I was in there the associate commented on my phone, at that time a Note 9 512gb model that I had got from Swappa and which was working fine, however I had heard about the camera on the S20 and was quite intrigued. I am a pen user though now that I have gotten used to the Note series but the Note 20 doesn't have quite as good a camera. The only S20 they had in stock was in white and that's not an option for me, however they did have the Note 20 in black. I wasn't even shopping for a phone, I was in there to pay for my internet however I somehow managed to leave with a new Note 20 Ultra 512/12gb (internal storage/RAM) and a new phone plan. It was a good deal all around and that's why I went with it. I got the phone for half price at $749 which they let me split up over 12 payments which would be made with my service bill which was also a better deal than I had previously and they threw in a free case and 3 pack of tpu screen protectors and applied a tempered glass one on the camera which sticks out a few mm off the back of the phone. That was a first for me and took a bit of getting used to but I got a different case for it from Amazon that evened it out with with the thickness of it so that took care of that. So all told I was out of there with a new phone with 5G and the ability to grab Xfimity wifi if it finds a signal that's faster than the mobile data towers and an unlimited call/text/multimedia/streaming/data plan for less than a hundred bucks a month.
So a few weeks into this I start having all kinds of strange behavior from the phone and I am sort of a tech geek/freak so I am trying to figure all this stuff out and it just all spiraled into a vortex of confusion and I realized one particular day that this phone is simply too much for what I need. There were several times where I just drew a blank trying to figure out how to use my phone as a phone. The thing has as much storage as one of my laptops because of the 512gb internal and the 512gb Samsung Evo Select micro SD card I put in it and it's just got a crazy amount of functionality and apps and just way more than I need, however even at half of the 100X space zoom of the S20 Ultra, the 50X on it takes some awesome photos. So what to do now?
It's a fancy paperwight/digital camera that sits on my coffee table most of the time.
So here's what I actually am writing this for. I decided that I wanted another Note 9 because besides the 2 S9+ phones I had previous to it, the Note 9 is my favorite because of the S-pen. I think the S9+ is a better device if you don't use the pen but I'm a fan of the pen now so it's the choice for the time being. So this time Wamatek had the best price on a refurbished 512gb Note 9. The phone I got from them however is a total piece of garbage. It has a cheap non OEM rear glass battery cover on it that cracked in 2 separate areas from a 1'7" drop off a chair onto a carpeted office floor! Granted it was thin commercial carpet squares glued to a concrete floor but the Note 9 that I had before the Note 20 Ultra which I had already sold had taken several drops from much higher with the exact same model of case, I prefer the Encased brand because they have served me well, and the rear nor the front glass ever cracked. I had that first Note 9 for almost 2 years and I'm a construction worker and have an active non work lifestyle as well and that phone took everything I put it through like a champ, and that was a lot. This one was busted within the first week of owning it from a miniscule incident and when I contacted them and told them about it they said well you dropped it so you're on your own, drops are not covered under our 30 day warranty. As I figured was going to happen but I tried anyway because one of the S9+ phones I'd purchased from Swappa developed a burn-in pattern in the screen shortly after I had purchased it and they offered me a full refund or exchange which I opted for the exchange and was happy with the replacement. They could have just as well asked me if I'd left it in the sun, but they didn't, they just sent me a return package with a new phone within 3 days! So in addition to the rear glass issue, the touch screen has gradually become non responsive unless I use the pen, which I don't always, and today, the charger port has become non functional after about a week of false warnings from the phone about moisture in the charger port. My phone hasn't been anywhere near any sort of moisture whatsoever. I am going to assume that when they refurbished the phone , they used the cheapest parts they could get and I got a phone with substandard rear glass, front digitizer and charger port because the symptoms all match with the reviews for the cheap replacement parts available online. I can confirm 100% now because in my conversation with the customer service rep from Wamatek, I was made aware that the rear glass on my phone did not have the "Samsung" or "Note 9" logos on it which an OEM or standard replacement part does. I also encountered this while shopping for a new DIY unit. They have some for less than $7 and complaints galore in the reviews about them cracking, some while the users were putting on a case to protect it! Or they have some for between $25 and $50 which are supposed to be either OEM or as good as. Same with the front glass/digitizers malfunctioning and charger ports going haywire.
I haven't decided whether I'm going to buy decent parts and attempt to repair it by myself yet and don't know if I will because I have my eye on a different phone altogether now and considering just getting away from Samsung "flagship" phones as the Motorola G stylus has a 256gb variant now for around $400 new. I've had Motorola phones in the past and they have been rugged devices which always served me well. It doesn't have a fancy camera on it but I have a nice one here on my coffee table which does plus I have both a 35mm film camera and a dslr, both of the Canon EOS Rebel kind.
So if anyone reading this is in the market for a new phone and is considering the previously owned route, I will stand behind Swappa and Back market but would advise to steer clear of Wamatek if you are considering any of those options. If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to let me and others who may read this so we have some more options or to let us know of other places to avoid as well.

 

Put it on FB Buy, Swap and Sell in your area!
Most here know what they want and how to avoid falls.
Nice story though.


Welcome to the internet.....this is a new world we live in now.

 

Sorry, looking at a long post with no spaces turns me off.
I have no desire to read it.
I suspect others probably feel the same.