Flash! Now you can trade-in your Kindle!
Well, now a lot of answers in Amazon Kindle community are outdated. 🙂
One of the frequent questions I see is if you can trade-in your Kindle on a newer model.
People say, “No, why would they do that? You can sell it yourself.”
Well, as of today, Amazon does have a trade-in program for Kindles:
Amazon Kindle Trade-In Program
How much can you get?
As with most trade-in programs, it depends on the model and the condition. However, you could trade-in your Kindle DX and get up to $135.
How easy is it?
Pretty darn easy. 🙂 You pick your product, select the quality of it (and they say they’ll pay you more if you underselected), print a free shipping label, send it back…and they deposit a gift card into your account.
For more information, you can see this
I’m curious…let me know if you are going to trade-in a Kindle…
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 
October 21, 2011 at 3:51 am |
I just need to find a box to pack up my first K1; I’ve already printed out the packing slip!
October 21, 2011 at 11:58 am |
Thanks for writing, Sherri!
I’m glad the information was useful for you. 🙂 I keep the boxes in which my Kindles are shipped…just in case. 🙂 It’s funny, but they are on my bookshelves.
October 21, 2011 at 4:19 am |
No plans to trade anything in — perhaps, if at some future time, they come out with a credible KDX follow-on, then I might consider trading in my 2nd gen KDX — although I wouldn’t expect to get very much for it 🙂
October 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm |
Thanks for writing, Edward!
Right, it’s not much…but it’s easy to get. I am curious about what Amazon will do with them…I’d love to see a lot of donations…
October 21, 2011 at 8:54 am |
When I bought a K2 about a month before the release of the K3 (KK or whatever it’s called this week) I really wished there was an upgrade program.
Now that G3 looks like it is being gently phased out, the landscape has changed somewhat.
While I still would like to trade up, the 39.00 (maximum) being offered for the K2 isn’t enough to tempt me.
October 21, 2011 at 12:14 pm |
Thanks for writing, Jj!
I’m not seeing the K3 being phased out…the rebranding seems to show an intent to continue to offer it…for a while, anyway. 🙂
October 21, 2011 at 5:28 pm
I meant G3 as in wireless, not K3 as in device. And I dont know that it’s going away, but the restrictions on G3 on the Touch are not a good sign.
Of course, they would be within their rights to pull the plug at any time.
October 22, 2011 at 12:26 am
Ultimately, the problem with 3G/4G access is not Amazon’s. The above diagram from the recent Gartner conference lays out the various possible wireless technologies versus the distance over which the technology operates (adjacent, campus/room, national). All of these technologies require spectrum allocations from the FCC. The national distance 3G/4G spectrum allocations are close to maxed out.
As a stopgap/interim solution, the FCC is requesting the national TV networks and some government agencies to give back spectrum they are not using (they are strongly resisting this). The ATT/T-Mobile merger is also in part an attempt by ATT to add T-Mobile’s spectrum to their inventory.
However, new high bandwidth smartphone and tablet usage patterns are rapidly exceeding long distance cellular carrier capacities. Carrier response has been to eliminate unlimited bandwidth plans, impose bandwidth caps, and in increasingly many cases, arbitrarily restricting access to the network.
Amazon is all about good customer experiences. It looks like going forward 3G/4G will not be able to provide this — hence the increasing reliability on WIFI (which because it runs over short distances, has far more “effective” spectrum available) where “good” experiences are more likely.
I expect Amazon to continue (and even expand) restrictions on the usage of cellular (3G/4G) networks similar to what they are doing with the Kindle Touch.
The cellular carriers for their parts are going to manage their existing scarce spectrum by increasing the price to use it until demand falls into line with capacity. This approach is already well underway in Europe.
October 23, 2011 at 12:37 am
Thanks for writing, Edward!
I appreciate you linking that diagram. I think there will continue to be more short range, wi-fi options…and in a chicken and the egg scenario, the Fire will drive some of that (along with other wi-fi only devices. I use wi-fi quite often on my SmartPhone as well.
October 21, 2011 at 11:13 am |
When Bezos announced the Kindle he said, “This is the most important thing we’ve ever done.” This unusually user-friendly trade-in offer is evidence of how seriously / strategically it takes its EBR market share. (And also of its sophisticated appreciation of intangibles like customer trust & satisfaction.)
October 21, 2011 at 12:14 pm |
Thanks for writing, Roger!
Good points all!
October 21, 2011 at 12:30 pm |
Hi. I gave my kindle dx to a good friend when I got my K3. Nothing I see about the new touch kindles suggests they are a big improvement on the K3 at least not to the point that I need to have one.
And I have an ipad, so the fire holds no major attraction.
Jeff’s team may someday dream something up that compells me to upgrade, but I cannot currently imagine it. To me this all comes down to the K3 being a great product. Given that it does pull one into the Amazon ecosystem vortex, I do not think they need to improve for reading fanatics like me.
I suppose the improvement is for those other beings who read less, expect touch (which I DO love on my iphad devices). Jeff has certainly made plenty of $ of me with the current version. Kathy
October 21, 2011 at 1:52 pm |
Thanks for writing, Kathy!
I agree that the K3 is a great product.
The big attraction for me with the Kindle Touch is X-Ray…I’ve very interested to see how that works.
The Fire’s big plus if you already tablet (and therefore have already paid for it), besides the integration with Amazon (which is big) is the Silk browser. My guess is that will be an attractant for a lot of people. I don’t think that will make people who already have an iPad switch, though.
October 21, 2011 at 1:14 pm |
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October 22, 2011 at 3:38 pm |
I’m trying to figure out if the Kindle Touch has the same games (or more) than my Kindle Keyboard. Do you know? Is there an on-screen keyboard like the one on my iPhone? I’d love to have the touch screen, but I don’t want to trade if I’m going to loose functions.
October 23, 2011 at 12:50 am |
Thanks for writing, Jane!
Yes, the Kindle Touch has a virtual keyboard. We don’t know about which games work on the Touch line yet, though. Since the interface has to be different, it wouldn’t surprise me if not all games that work on the Keyboard work on the Touch…and vice versa.
October 22, 2011 at 5:27 pm |
Thanks for the post, Bufo. I wasn’t aware that Amazon had any type of trade-in program. I had been toying with the idea of selling my DX, and Amazon’s trade-in program makes it a lot easier to do so.
Our household owns a KDX White International and two Keyboard SOs. We have two Kindle Fires on order. I haven’t used my KDX since seeing how much better the contrast is on the pearl screens of the Keyboards.
I can get a $101.75 Amazon gift certificate if I ship my DX to the company handling Amazon’s trade-ins. I have until 10/29/2011 — a week from today — to bring my DX to a UPS shipping location.
I’m seriously considering doing this.The gift certificate will pay for a lot of apps and accessories for our Fires.
October 23, 2011 at 12:53 am |
Thanks for writing, Daisy!
I really appreciate you sharing that! I can completely understand doing the trade-in rather than selling it yourself. I often talk about how you should calculate that you are paying yourself your regular salary for tasks you do. Let’s say you make fifteen dollars an hour, and you could get seventy-five dollars more selling it yourself. Might it take you five hours more to sell it yourself? I think it might…hard to say. I also wouldn’t want to deal with somebody disputing the quality of it after I sent it, processing the payment for the sale, and so on.
November 8, 2011 at 8:00 am |
demotivator…
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