Electronic Gadgets - From Junk to Joy

[This post is written and copyrighted by FIRE Finance (http://firefinance.blogspot.com).]

Dec 12, 2008: When we were cleaning our house in preparation for our moves (this year) we were amazed at the amount of electronics junk that had piled up over the years. You name it and we had it - old PDAs, cell phones, computers, laptops, music players, docking stations and what not. We were not sure what to do with so much stuff. Since we are environment friendly people we did not want to trash them without giving a thought to recycling.

So we started our research on recycling electronics junk where we can make some money instead of shelling out our dollars. Remember these goods are outdated so they most probably have negligible value when listed online. Also, it is to be noted that we have to pay listing fees at ebay for listing our goods online and then pay ebay a commission if the goods sell. Amazon lists goods for free of cost until the goods sell when we have to pay them a commission. Not willing to pay any listing fees or commissions we continued to research for other available options.

We went through the recycle programs at OfficeDepot, OfficeMax, Staples and other office products giants. Everywhere we found that these companies would very happily recycle our electronics trash at a price. Not wanting to give in so easily we started searching online and found Ebay's Rethink. Ebay gives four options to deal with our outdated electronics - Sell, Donate, Recycle, Organize. We chose to sell to see how the program works. Its a wonderful program for small sellers like us.

• Ebay pays for the shipping.
• All we had to do was to print the labels, put our electronic goods in a box and drop it off at the nearest UPS office.
  
• Once our goods reached Ebay, they evaluated it with respect to our claim. If the conditions of our goods matched the claim they paid us the promised price.
  
• For selling there are various options, check them out here.

We did a Fast Cash Trade with eztradein since we had to move soon and it worked fine for us. Four used outdated cell phones fetched us a total of $60. Not a bad sum as extra pocket money! Other online companies buying cell phones at Ebay Rethink are:

• RipMobile
• CellForCash

We encourage you to trade in your electronics junk at Ebay's rethink and earn cash for it instead of throwing them in to the trash. Not only does it earn money for us thus fattening our wallets, but it helps in recycling and reuse of the goods leading to a better environment and healthier planet. Truly from junk to joy :).

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