There’s a drawer in your house with an old iPhone in it, and you already know which drawer. Maybe the screen is spidered, or the battery gave up two years ago, or it stopped turning on one day and you never got around to dealing with it, so there it sits.
Apple will take that phone and recycle it for free, though PayMore will hand you cash for it.
PayMore is an electronics resale chain with stores across the US, and the process is about as involved as returning a library book. You walk in, someone appraises the device, they wipe it in front of you, and you leave with money.
A Third of the iPhones They Buy Are Already Broken
PayMore’s own August figures put more than a third of the iPhones it purchased in the broken category, so a cracked or dead phone isn’t an awkward exception at that counter. The company’s FAQ says it plainly: “We can still make offers on devices that are completely dead,” since the technicians can price out the usable components even when nothing lights up.
The model crossing the counter most often that month was the iPhone 13, which puts the typical seller two or three generations back rather than in line for every new release.
Cash Today Instead of Credit Later
Apple’s trade-in page lists $175 as the most it will give you for an iPhone 13 in good condition. That figure arrives as Apple credit rather than money, so it comes off the price if you buy something the same day, and if you aren’t buying anything, Apple emails you a gift card that only spends at Apple.
A cracked screen, a swollen battery or a failed diagnostic all quote lower, sometimes far lower. A phone Apple decides has no credit value gets recycled for nothing at all.
PayMore pays cash with no purchase attached, which is the whole difference for anyone who hasn’t settled on what they’re buying next.
The Console Under Your TV Counts Too
Grand Theft Auto VI arrives November 19 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and it isn’t coming to the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One at launch. So a few million people are about to work out that the console under the TV won’t run the game they’ve been waiting on since 2013.
PayMore bought nearly 10,000 gaming systems in a single recent month, and the same logic covers them, so a red ring of death, a disc drive that quit reading or a system that overheats and shuts itself off all still get appraised.
Through November 20, which is the day after GTA VI lands, PayMore is running a promotion called Level Up. Sell a qualifying gaming system at a participating location and you get your normal cash offer plus a $10 PayMore promotional gift card, with no cap on how many systems you bring in.
What You Need to Walk In With
You have to be 18 with a physical government photo ID, and you need to have signed out of iCloud first, because an Apple ID-locked phone gets turned away at the door. Charge it if it still takes a charge, since the staff test whatever they can.
Carrier-locked and financed phones are both fine, though stolen ones aren’t.
Only about 31% of people sell or trade an old phone when they buy a new one, and fewer still take it anywhere other than their carrier, so that leaves a lot of drawers and a lot of TV cabinets with money sitting in them, and your dead iPhone and old PlayStation aren’t going to be getting more valuable just sitting around in a drawer.
