There’s a better way to sell your old iPhone

Local start-up company has an app for that

Gifted the latest iPhone over the holidays and don’t know what to do with your old Apple device? A local startup has the app for you.

Toronto-based Orchard this year launched an app that both appraises iPhones and helps people buy and sell used devices

The app is the brainchild of CEO and co-founder Bruno Wong. When Wong wanted to upgrade his iPhone, he found his carrier was offering much less for the used smartphone than buyers on websites such as Kijiji, Craigslist and eBay, but he was wary about the dangers of using an online marketplace to sell his phone.

Wong’s personal experience, he said, highlighted a gap in the used iPhone market.

“I stood outside the Apple store and just talked to everyone with an iPhone,” Wong said. “I realized more than 50 per cent of the people I talked to just didn’t do anything (with their used phones) because it was too much work.”

The results of the casual poll Wong took are reflected in a Consumer Intelligence Research Partners report from February 2014. It says 82 per cent of Canadians do not sell their used phone. The other 18 per cent either trade their phone in through their carrier or sell their device using an online marketplace.

Wong said the majority of people don’t know how to approach finding or getting rid of a used phone.

“There’s a lot of work that goes into the buying and selling process,” he said.

Orchard’s app can be downloaded for free through Apple’s app store. It tests almost 30 of the phone’s functions, such as the phone’s cameras, headphone jacks and volume buttons. It asks users about the physical condition of the phone, taking into consideration issues such as a crack in the screen or depleted battery function. Once users have flipped through four screens of diagnostic tests, the app takes less than three minutes to come up with a value for the device, which can then be sold through Orchard.

Wong said online marketplaces are not the safest place to sell devices, citing horror stories that ended in people being robbed or buying a broken phone. Carriers, he said, offer prices that are $150 to $200 less than the going rate online.

“It’s a substantial low-ball offer,” Wong said.

Orchard, he said, empowers people with an iPhone to sell. The company will find the buyers, and sellers can decide how soon they would like to be paid.

“They can be paid sooner, but we’ll take a larger commission,” Wong said.

Wong said he and co-founders Hamza Javed and Alex Sebastian are realizing there are a lot of people who want a new phone but don’t want to end their current contract.

“We’re finding that a lot of Canadians are very skeptical of carrier contracts and carrier plans. Old, grandfathered contracts are usually better, so people don’t want to sign a new contract but want a new phone.”

Phones are not connected to a carrier; SIM cards are, Wong said. The company also checks every device against the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association’s national blacklist of lost and stolen phones.

Since launching in March 2014, Orchard has brokered $250,000 in used iPhone sales across the country, selling 100 per cent of the devices that have been listed with the company’s concierge iPhone-brokering service. The app itself has been downloaded more than 12,000 times.

Wong estimates the 82 per cent of people not selling their used phones amounts to what he calls “$14 billion in lost opportunity.”

The app only pulls the devices’ metadata, so users don’t have to worry their personal information is being collected, he said.

The company also sends reminders to users when their phone is about to see a drop in price.

For now, the company only buys and sells iPhones, but they’re hoping to expand in the future to other technology, such as androids, tablets and wearable devices such as the upcoming Apple Watch, Wong said.

Orchard is enticing phone owners to use their app by making it just as easy to buy and sell as it is to throw a used phone in a junk drawer to be forgotten, he said.

Wong said current data shows they’re not only drawing customers who would normally use a marketplace to sell their phone to their app, but also some of the 82 per cent of people who wouldn’t normally think to sell at all.

“Nobody wants to haggle with a stranger and then meet them at 7 p.m. at Finch station,” Wong said. “This way, they don’t have to.”