We’ve lived in our house for 3 1/2 years, so we figured it was high time we dealt with all the miscellaneous boxes that landed in our attic. Old clothes, baby items we don’t use anymore, the soundtrack to the TV show “Charmed”, and many other random items were all living up there. We made piles of “keep” and “give away”, and things were going well until we hit the DVDs. Luckily, a quick Google search led me to Decluttr, which saved the day!
Decluttr is a trade-in program, similar to programs available from Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers. They have an app that lets you scan CDs, DVDs, and books into their system, and they give you a quote on what they’ll pay for each item. I had started this process on Amazon, but I had to manually enter and confirm each item, and it was getting tedious. Decluttr let me scan the barcodes, so I flew through our boxes of DVDs quite quickly. Most of them weren’t worth more than $0.50 or so, but a few were worth more ($10.67 for Weird Science Seasons 1&2?!?!), and in the end, the app assessed the value at around $43.00. I received an email with a prepaid UPS label, boxed up the DVDs, and received an email today from Decluttr confirming the items were in good condition and notifying me they had mailed my check.
Overall, it was probably the simplest trade-in experience I’ve ever had, though it comes at a price. Decluttr isn’t buying your old DVDs to be nice, they’re probably reselling them on eBay or Amazon. But how much is your time worth? I wasn’t going to start painstakingly listing each DVD for sale, nor was I going to drive around to every possible trade-in store to see who could give me the best price. I wanted easy and reasonable, and Decluttr gave me exactly that. Now, there are a few other things you should know before you box up your collection: Decluttr doesn’t guarantee the quote from the app is accurate, and they will not return items once they receive them. So if an item is borderline with scratches, or it is missing a barcode or liner notes, Decluttr might not accept it.
The part where they won’t take non-barcode items (or items where the barcode is punched, slashed, or marked), is because you cannot officially resell promotional or bargain materials; I had a few DVDs I couldn’t send because they were sold as part of a two-pack, and the barcodes for both DVDs were punched out. On the other hand, we had a lot of TV box sets in excellent condition, so we weren’t worried about those being rejected. I also likely would have simply dumped the box on the corner for free, so any amount of money Decluttr paid us was just “found money” for us. If you’re counting on getting a good price or maximizing your payout, your best bet is likely to cut out the middleman and sell the products yourself. Decluttr also takes electronics, but I did not test that out — a quick test of their prices indicated they are in-line with Gazelle, Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers that trade in cell phones.
Overall, I am really pleased with our Decluttr experience. It took no time to input all the media, and their turnaround was less than 48 hours from when they received our box. It took a week for us to get our check, but they also offer a direct deposit option for those who are in more of a hurry or don’t like getting paper checks. If you’re lazily sitting with a pile of unwatched DVDs like we were, run your collection through Decluttr — you never know, it might be worth it!
What I Liked: Easy to use the app; scanner is very quick; estimated payment and actual payment matched; no out-of-pocket costs; fast payment
What Needs Improvement: Nothing
