French company offers premium refurbished phones

[IAmAndre]

Source (in French): https://www.lesnumeriques.com/telephone-portable/yesyes-l-anti-leboncoin-pour-smartphones-d-occasion-a3733.html

 

I found this week the interview of the founder of YesYes.com. This company has been founded by former Sony employees. What they do is they allow smartphones owners to sell their devices online, while ensuring buyers that each device bought from their platform meets high criteria (good battery life, low cosmetic damage, etc). Basically how it works is: sellers post their offer online, and when a buyer decides to buy the phone, the seller sends the phone to the YesYes' lab, which will certify the quality and functionality of the phone. They will also include a charger for example if it's missing or replace a battery if the one that's in the phone is too old. They will also fix any minor issue with the phone, or charge the seller an extra fee if it's a complex one. If they receive a phone that doesn't match the seller's description, they will either downgrade the state mentioned in the description (from say "like new" to "good") or return it to the seller with no certification. They also help the buyer find another deal if the deal is too edgy. They do all this with a 20% commission, with a minimum value of €50. This means that their service is currently only available for high end smartphones, only iPhones for now although they plan on including high end Android devices.

 

Quote

5 million used smartphones sold in France in 2017: 3 million between private individuals and 2 million refurbished. Our observation with Christophe Perrin is that there are always more smartphones under repair that are either counterfeit or hacked. We thought that there was a great opportunity in the private-to-consumer market: to provide certification and to ensure buyers the proper functioning of the product and that it is not stolen. The idea is also to guarantee the sellers to be paid, to find a buyer quickly without dealing with the issues of sales between individuals. Being a trusted third party is our starting point.

 

I think this should be the norm, and I'm surprised that big actors such as eBay haven't implemented features like these. Having used eBay both as a seller and a buyer, I'm always amazed by how useless their customer service can be. I've never spent more than $200 on a smartphone, so with a service like this I would definitely be willing to spend a little more to get a high end device. Now as it's been mentioned in a comment on the article, it would have been a good idea to make the whole part-replacement thing an extra service, as many sellers would find the commission too high.

[dizmo]

How on earth do you think eBay would be able to implement something like this? Have staff certify each phone? Have you any idea how much money that would cost them, not to mention the massive drop in business they'd get? No one wants to go through that much hassle to sell something.

[Master Disaster]

Is this as advertisement?

[IAmAndre]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

Is this as advertisement?

Nope. Just sharing the article of a news website, like in most posts of this category.

1 minute ago, dizmo said:

 Have you any idea how much money that would cost them,

The commission would just be higher, and I'm not saying that every phone should be certified. This could be a feature.

[dizmo]

2 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

The commission would just be higher, and I'm not saying that every phone should be certified. This could be a feature.

I don't think you really realize what you're saying. Employing someone isn't cheap. You'd have to set them up with office space, testing equipment, then you'd have to have staff that would work the rating system...it's not a one or two person job. Then you'd have to have people use the service enough to make it profitable. On top of all that....why? Why would people use this, when they have just as easy a time selling on the regular site without jumping through more hoops?

 

It simply doesn't make sense.

[IAmAndre]

5 minutes ago, dizmo said:

I don't think you really realize what you're saying. Employing someone isn't cheap. You'd have to set them up with office space, testing equipment, then you'd have to have staff that would work the rating system...it's not a one or two person job. Then you'd have to have people use the service enough to make it profitable. On top of all that....why? Why would people use this, when they have just as easy a time selling on the regular site without jumping through more hoops?

 

It simply doesn't make sense.

I personally would. That's actually why I'd rather spend €200-300 on an entry level smartphone than spend the same price on a used phone on eBay. Many companies offer professionally refurbished phones so eBay could do it if they really wanted to. And BTW I wasn't talking eBay in particular but big companies in general and why it hasn't been implemented already.

[TetraSky]

They sure are taking a large cut out of it, 20% out of each sales, with a minimum of nearly $75 CAD (49euro).

 

They even say that "yesyes" is one of the more expensive platform for used phones in that article.

It says for example, an iphone 6 with 16GB of storage is 189 euro on yesyes, that's $286 CAD, for 6 months warranty. You can literally just go on ebay, buy a refurb iPhone 6 with 16GB and a 30 days warranty, for $200 CAD...
I don't think an extra 5 months of warranty is worth that extra money, chances are, if the phone still works after a month, it won't just randomly die for no reason in the next couple months either.

[IAmAndre]

8 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

They sure are taking a large cut out of it, 20% out of each sales, with a minimum of nearly $75 CAD (49euro).

 

They even say that "yesyes" is one of the more expensive platform for used phones in that article.

It says for example, an iphone 6 with 16GB of storage is 189 euro on yesyes, that's $286 CAD, for 6 months warranty. You can literally just go on ebay, buy a refurb iPhone 6 with 16GB and a 30 days warranty, for $200 CAD...
I don't think an extra 5 months of warranty is worth that extra money, chances are, if the phone still works after a month, it won't just randomly die for no reason in the next couple months either.

It is high indeed, but you're also getting a new battery and a certified product. Like there might be people looking to sell their old iPhone but can't because no one would want a phone with a low battery life.

[WkdPaul]

42 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Is this as advertisement?

I can confirm this isn't advertising, not sure why people are reporting it.

 

Source ; French is my native language and "Les Numériques" is a known French news site related to tech.

 

This just happens to be news related to the French market only.

[EnergyEclipse]

1 hour ago, IAmAndre said:

It is high indeed, but you're also getting a new battery and a certified product. Like there might be people looking to sell their old iPhone but can't because no one would want a phone with a low battery life.

Have you ever heard if stores like CeX? 

[ARikozuM]

6 minutes ago, EnergyEclipse said:

Have you ever heard if stores like CeX? 

I thought only mommies and daddies could do that! 

 

On topic: This sounds like a good idea for Ebay. If they can implement this as an extra paid-for insurance on a seller's phone, the buyer will feel more at ease and any "it doesn't work" scams reports will get weeded out. 

[IAmAndre]

1 hour ago, EnergyEclipse said:

Have you ever heard if stores like CeX? 

Nope, I had to Google it.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Swappa already exists. Well for US markets anyways 

[Syntaxvgm]

ok.