Sellshark Review
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Ease of Use
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Pricing
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Shipping Options
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Payment
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Transparency
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Customer Service
Summary
In this review, we look at Sellshark.com, a buyback website for selling your used devices. Sellshark primarily buys Apple products. While their service has some good features, the lack of reliable reviews or social media presence is disconcerting.
About Sellshark
Founded in 2011, Sellshark is an online buyback service that promises you can sell your used electronics risk-free and regardless of their condition. But who are they? Their website doesn’t reveal much about the team behind the shark. Fortunately, there’s the internet to tell us that the service is based in St. Louis (well, actually, Ballwin), MO, and was founded by a man named Jon Slyman.
Beyond that, they’re hard to track down. Sellshark hasn’t received much press. They don’t have a profile on Better Business Bureau. Their Facebook seems to have been deactivated and they haven’t posted on Twitter in two years (so maybe call ahead to make sure they’re still there before mailing them anything).
That said, they continue to receive positive reviews on Trustpilot where they get a solid 9/10 score and on Resellerratings.com where they have a 9.35/10. That bodes well – though both of those sites have been accused of not necessarily accurately reflecting real customer scores.
So, all in all, it’s hard to know much about them based on their public presence (or lack thereof). Let’s take a closer look.
More About Sellshark’s Buyback Program
What Devices Do They Buy?
Sellshark buys most Apple products and pretty much exclusively Apple products. Outside of Apple, they’ll buy your used Samsung Galaxy or Sony Playstation – and that’s it. If you have other devices to sell, you may consider Decluttr.
But if you’ve got an Apple product, they probably buy it! They accept iPhones starting with the 4 up to the X, iPods, iPads, Apple Displays, Macs, Apple TVs, Apple Watches (series 1-3), HomePods, and Apple accessories and networking devices. Whew!
The Quoting Process
This is… it’s an odd quoting process. It’s in essence the same as other similar sites, but the organization is a little disorienting. You click boxes to select different descriptors of your device (type of device, condition, color, etc.).
They’ve split up the condition descriptors between the beginning and end of the series of questions, and answers can’t be adjusted without clearing every piece of information entered since. It’s not challenging, by any means, it’s just not the best version of this system we’ve seen.
Shipping Options
Sellshark provides a pre-paid label, you bring the packing materials. One thing that’s nice about them is they insure your package completely, no questions asked. So that’s good!
Payout Options
It seems like they prioritize PayPal but will send you a check if you want. Not blowing any minds there, but nothing to shake a stick at either. And they’ll credit your account the day they approve the device, which could mean a nice speedy turnaround on payment.
Customer Service
In a bid to prioritize personal contact, Sellshark has a banner on the upper-right-hand corner of their site that gives you the fastest way to get in touch with a human. The banner appears to switch over when their office closes for the day from a phone number to an email.
That’s a neat feature – it shows they care that you feel like you can get someone, at the very least. They offer a variety of ways to make contact and, if what reviews we can see are to be believed, they’re nice. (Unfortunately, again, the majority of their reviews don’t appear on unbiased sites.)
As well as the contact information above, they also have a live chat feature that shows an average response time of 1 day. Cool.
Additional Benefits & Features
Sellshark makes two unique promises. From their website:
The rest of their selling points would be true of any buyback site, but these two are worth taking into consideration – though you should still pay your used device well and take a photo of it before sending it off!
How Do The Payouts Compare?
The payouts are fair. They stand out in the buying of damaged devices – they’re on the high end of quotes for cracked and broken iPhones. A regular used iPhone in good-condition, on the other hand, is quoted in the mid-to-low range.
The same is true for the Samsung Galaxy – one that’s damaged might get a slightly higher price at Sellshark than elsewhere and one in good condition fetches an average bid.
And One More Thing
Since we don’t know much about Sellshark’s track record, it’d be prudent to exercise caution in dealing with them. There are a couple complaints online from disgruntled customers who feel they were requoted or otherwise scammed.
Despite their cheeky site section about all the reasons they’re clearly not a scam, there are some weird red flags here. It’s a little unsettling that they list their social media profiles and press coverage as evidence of their not-scam-ness when all seem to be rather out of date or even discontinued.
On the other hand, it bears mentioning that they’ve created this handy guide for removing an iCloud account from your device!
Wherever you ultimately decide to sell, this might come in handy.
In Conclusion
Sellshark has some positive points – they offer free shipping, relatively quick turnaround on payments, and some nice guarantees. Their customer service options are robust and their offers and generally fair. All that said, the upsides may not outweigh the risk of a using site that is largely unvetted. If you decide to use Sellshark, we’d advise documenting your items before sending them in. And if turns out well, let us know! We’d love to be proven wrong.
Did this company have any direct ties to jail.com? Address listed same for both as: 100 Fillmore St 5th Floor
Denver, CO 80206 USA. Any info appreciated.
Hi C, We do not have any ties to that company. The address stated above is a shared address we use to get mail delivered to, However we do not use it anymore and are only located in St. Louis, MO at the moment.
I had a great experience and was paid far more for my iPad than any other offer. My iPad reached them in 3 days and 1 day later the money was in my PayPal account. Before I began to get my offer, I called the number in the upper right and got a pickup after one ring. He answered my question to my satisfaction. I cannot give them anything but 5 stars.
We appreciate your business Ross! Let us know if you ever need any help selling again. Thanks!
This company is very misleading. Make sure you know how to check the staus of your battery before sending in. My macbook was in perfect condition except the battery which noted “replace soon.” It met every condition for the normal category except that one, yet when I emailed about it, they told me that it was considered “damaged.” The criteria they listed for the “damaged” category are: Damaged LCD or software issues; Jammed, missing or malfunctioning buttons; Device has been wet but is still functional; Heavy corner damages due to drops; Physical damage in multiple locations on the device; Device powers on but does not boot up properly; Screen peeling or delamination.
NONE of those describe my computer, yet this company still would have labeled it damaged and tried to undersell me by hundreds. Just my opinion, but I would consider this a scam.
Hi Kira, We are very sorry to hear you are not happy how we grade things. However, this is an industry-standard as we are unable to pay full price for a computer that needs a battery replaced. In order to resell the computer, we have to replace the battery with an OEM battery that can cost anywhere from $99 – $299 for OEM. We clearly state we do not accept computers with bad batteries under normal conditions in our terms on our website. We also give all customers the chance to receive their item back free of charge if they do not like a revised offer due to it not being as described. However, it looks like you never actually used our service or sent in your computer and are criticizing us over something we have no control over. We are in business to help customers and to turn a profit and if we purchased broken computers for normal prices we wouldn’t be in business long. If you have any other feedback about our company please personally call me at 314-596-1696 and we will take it into consideration. Thank you, Jon Slyman, CEO
Hi Ryan, Thank you for your review. Sellshark is currently undergoing a new site development and process. We are revamping the site for 2020 and I wanted to thank you for all of your advice as we are going to address all of your points. We also just signed back up for trust pilot and reseller ratings so our ratings should start to skyrocket as we start collecting reviews again. Any other advice or recomendations please feel free to let us know. Thank you!