A trade-in, back on sale

What does this tour show?

It shows a part exchange from start to finish at three in the afternoon. A customer wants money off a new phone for their old one, a two-year-old 128 GB graphite handset. Priya checks it over, records what she finds, makes an offer from the value guide with a note on the condition, the customer accepts, and eight minutes later the old phone is back in stock as a refurbished device with its own IMEI.

Trade-ins are good business for a phone shop when they are done consistently. They bring customers back, they make an upgrade affordable, and a well-chosen used phone often earns a better margin than a new one. They go wrong when the offer depends on who is behind the counter, or when the traded phone sits in a drawer for a month because nobody added it to stock.

How is the offer worked out?

The tour's sample phone was checked like this:

From a value guide figure of £190 for this model in good order, the light screen scratches justify a £25 deduction, so the offer is £165. Writing down both numbers matters: if the customer asks why, the answer is on the screen, not in someone's head.

Step by step

1. Open Trade-ins and start a New trade-in. The page has a board with columns for To value, Waiting for the customer, Accepted (add to stock) and Finished, so you can see every trade-in at a glance.
2. Identify the phone. Record the model and its IMEI. The IMEI is what will follow the phone into stock if the deal goes ahead.
3. Value it. Choose the overall condition (excellent, good, fair or poor), the screen condition, and type the battery health percentage from the phone's settings.
4. Record what it comes with. Original box, charger, accessories. A boxed phone with its charger resells faster.
5. Use the value guide. Start from its figure rather than a guess. It keeps offers consistent across staff and days.
6. Write a note on the condition. For example: "Light scratches on the screen. Battery 86%. Charger included." This is the reason for any deduction.
7. Make the offer. In the tour, £165. Tell the customer the figure and the reason in the same breath.
8. Record the answer. Accept offer or Turn down. Either way it is saved, so you have a record of what was offered.
9. Move it along the board. An accepted trade-in moves to "Accepted, add to stock".
10. Add to stock. The phone becomes a device in stock, marked refurbished, with its IMEI. It now appears on the electronics Home and can be sold on the Electronics POS.

How do you price the refurbished phone?

Work back from what similar refurbished phones sell for, then check the margin over what you paid. If you paid £165 and a clean grade B handset of that model sells for £229, the margin is £64, or about 28% of the selling price. Leave room for a battery or a screen protector if you plan to fit one before resale. The markup vs margin guide has the formulas, and how to price products covers setting prices that customers accept.

Why use a board for trade-ins?

Because trade-ins rarely finish in one visit. A customer may want to think about the offer overnight, or a phone may need a proper check before you commit to a price. The board keeps every trade-in in one of four columns: To value, Waiting for the customer, Accepted (add to stock) and Finished. At a glance you can see who is waiting for an answer from you, who you are waiting for, and which accepted phones still need adding to stock. Without it, part exchanges end up as sticky notes on the till and phones in an envelope under the counter. With it, the end-of-day question "is anything half finished?" has a two-second answer, and a colleague on the next shift can pick up any trade-in where you left it.

Tips for fair and fast trade-ins

• Check the phone in front of the customer. It removes suspicion on both sides.
• Ask the customer to sign out of their accounts and remove the SIM and memory card before you take it.
• Use the same deductions for the same faults every time. Consistency is what makes an offer feel fair.
• Add accepted trade-ins to stock the same day. A phone in a drawer is cash you cannot see.
• Keep the value guide up to date as new models launch and older ones drop in value.
• Photograph any damage you note, and keep the photo with your own records, so a later disagreement about condition is easy to settle.
• If the trade-in is against a new phone sold the same day, finish the trade-in first so the customer knows the figure before they choose.

Common mistakes

• Making an offer without writing down why. The next time the customer comes in, nobody remembers.
• Not recording turned-down offers. You lose the evidence of whether your offers are competitive.
• Taking a phone still locked to someone's account. It may not be resaleable at all.
• Leaving accepted trade-ins off the system. They are missing from stock value and nobody can sell them.
• Selling a refurbished phone as new. The refurbished label is there to stop that happening.

What should you do next?

The traded phone is now refurbished stock, ready for the till. At the end of the day, the next tour, the week so far, shows trade-ins in the shop's analytics: what was paid for devices, the average paid and how many are still to value. To understand how trade-ins affect the value of your stock, read the stock valuation guide.

How EasyTaskr helps

EasyTaskr records each trade-in's condition, screen, battery and contents, the offer from the value guide with a note, and whether the customer accepted or turned it down. Accepted trade-ins move along a board, and Add to stock turns them into refurbished devices with their IMEI, ready to sell on the till.