Hey lovlies, so my very good Vix (she’s a Welshie) too has written me a post. We met years ago when I first moved to London and instantly decided she was one of my favourite people in the world. Anyway, have a read and let me know what you think in the comments.

Anyone who knows me from the finance industry will know I pride myself on being a bit of a money saving champion. I started my career in personal finance at Confused.com, and have taken in a building society, a cashback site, and a voucher code site along the way.

I don’t stay in finance because it’s what I know, I stay in it because it’s what I love. So, when the opportunity came up to join Decision Tech, owner of the home comms comparison engine, Broadbandchoices, it was a classic no-brainer (a phrase I hate, can someone please come up with something that means this but is not this? Thanks). Their other businesses, I discovered, through the course of my pre-interview research, however, were in the space of mobile phone recycling.

Now, I confess that up to this point, my only real exposure to recycling was the adverts that I saw for these services, typically in-between back to back episodes of Homes Under The Hammer and Come Dine With Me face down on the sofa on sick days. Despite having spent two years working at a cashback site and trying to get people to accept the notion they could make *free money* just by shopping, a service to sell a fully-working piece of tech, well that was obviously too easy and too good to be true. But, on one of the annoyingly regular occasions I’ve been wrong in my 33 years of life, I was wrong about this.

Last week on Sellmymobile.com, the average Apple device got £179.84 at trade in, with the iPhone 7 256gb averaging £453.00.

It is SUPER-EASY – just like with traditional price comparison, you tell Sellmymobile.com what you have and it shows you your best options. A lot of providers will be able to transfer payment into your account on the day they receive your phone.

Phone not in perfect condition? Not a problem. Some providers offer a price on damaged phones, but check their individual criteria to learn what they will consider. 7 days to free money – my absolute favourite kind.

So I feel like a mug now, sitting on a pile of outdated smart phones like a mobile phone version of Smaug the dragon.

As much as it sticks in my craw, I knew this was a useful injection of cash when I upgraded my phone. Obviously, I would have liked to have put that cash towards shoes and cocktails, but it was going to be cheaper along the way to invest it in the upfront cost for the handset and get a cheaper contract. While my shopping dreams dissolved, having the money from a recycled handset to do that took the sting right out of the £85 spend.

No doubt the industry has a lot of work to do in building trust, as for a lot of people it’s new and putting your expensive thing in an envelope to send away (despite the fact you would have just let it rot in a drawer) is an act of trust. There *are* unfortunately opportunists in this space who might not be operating ethically, but the best way to counteract this is to use a service like Sellmymobile.com, who do make checks before allowing service providers to appear on the panel.

And, as someone now working for one of these brands speaking to readers who don’t know me, I wouldn’t expect you to immediately trust my opinion. BUT if you are unsure, then a quick trip over to Trustpilot should hopefully offer reassurance, real consumers reporting their experience. As part of our mission for transparency and to do the best for customers, Sellmymobile shows these ratings alongside the price offered. We don’t just show them, we monitor them, and if a provider drops below what we expect then we investigate them.

And it’s not just phones – old tablets can be traded in too. So open that drawer (you know the one – the one we all have, full of mobile dinosaurs, keys to old houses and instruction manuals for things you don’t have anymore) and turn them into free money.

Then feel free to buy me a drink.