How to use the Amazon trade-in program

By Christian de Looper Published January 27, 2021

Did you know you can trade-in products like smartphones and tablets to Amazon and get store credit? The Amazon Trade-in program has been around for some time, but if you haven’t heard about it before, here’s how to use it.

Through the program, you can trade in a slew of different items — but perhaps the most important these days is the smartphone. If you’re in the market for a new phone, Amazon will buy your old phone from you to help offset the cost. Interested in the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8? Amazon could pay you up to $170 for a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which could go straight to helping you buy your new phone.

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But how does the trade-in program work? Here are the steps to follow:

Submit a trade-in: Head to the Amazon trade-in store and find the items you’re looking to trade-in. To do that, first select the category (cellphones, tablets, etc.), then click on the right item.
Ship your trade-in: The next step is to ship out your product. Within 7 days of submitting the trade-in, you’ll be issued a shipping label, which you can use to ship out the product to Amazon. Make sure to include the packing slip inside the box so Amazon knows the item is from you.
Get paid: When Amazon gets the product and confirms its condition, your account will receive credit that can then be used to buy anything on the Amazon store.

In between shipping the item and getting paid, you can actually track the status of the trade-in. This is done by heading to the trade-in account and clicking on Review the status of your trade-in item. It may take a few days for the payment to be credited to your account, so don’t worry if after shipping you don’t immediately get paid.

Apart from the Galaxy S7 Edge, there are a number of phones you can trade-in for Amazon store credit. Perhaps the most notable is the black iPhone 7 Plus, which could net you a whopping $370 for use on your Amazon account. Again, phones aren’t the only items you can trade in — you can even trade in your old textbooks, DVDs, video games, and so on.

Christian de Looper

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Christian de Looper is a long-time freelance writer who has covered every facet of the consumer tech and electric vehicle…

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