"Wouldn't it be great if I could compare prices of all of the mobile phone recycling companies, without having to go to each one in turn?"
And so we started work on the Sell My Old Mobile Phone web site. That was in 2004... not really! It was in the summer of 2010.
We began by collecting a data feed of prices from the major mobile phone retailers. We got that in the morning. We thought by the afternoon we'd have a nice, clean database that we could use for the price comparison. Oh no. Not even close. Would you believe how many ways you can write "Apple iPhone"? We saw "apple Iphone", "Apple I-Phone", "Appleiphone" and many more. And don't even get me started on how many ways you can write "Apple iPhone 3Gs 16Gb". We had to map them all, so no matter what the idiosyncracies of the feeds, our customers could compare them all side by side.
Along the way we had some more good ideas.
"Now that were're storing all of this data, why don't we keep a record so people can see what their phone was worth last week, last month, last year."
So we did. If you look at any phone page (for example the comparison of prices you'll get for recycling our friend the Apple iPhone 3GS 16Gb you'll see at the bottom how the prices have changed since we began collecting the data (around the start of October. As you can see, iPhones seem to hold their value pretty well.
And then we thought
"Why don't we let site users write reviews of mobile phone recyclers? Then if they have a really good (or really bad) experience, they can let everyone else know about it?"
So we did that too. You can write reviews of any of the mobile phone recyclers on the site.
And now the site is live we're sure to have more good ideas, but we're also hoping that you will too. Please email info@sellmyoldmobilephone.co.uk, or send your feedback via the little box that appears in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
Graham Miller
Sell My Old Mobile Phone
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