Turn Your Unwanted Media and Tech into Cash with Decluttr

Last summer, my family and I moved from Indiana to Wisconsin. We purged a great deal of our stuff before we left, and got rid of some more once we were unpacking. And yet, in every room of our new house you can still find:

• video games that we no longer play,
• worn out tech gadgets that we don’t know how to dispose of,
• DVDs that we haven’t watched in years, and
• CDs we don’t remember buying (I’m looking at you, Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morrisette).

In the past, decluttering all of this stuff from our house would either involve me giving it away for free to Goodwill or Freecycle, or wasting hours of my time individually posting each item on eBay or Craigslist.

Thankfully, there is now a third option: Decluttr.

With Decluttr, you have the opportunity to get rid of unwanted DVDs, Blu-Rays, video games, CDs, books, and tech gadgets and receive a good price and fast payment for your stuff.

Here’s how Decluttr can help you clear your house of clutter while filling your wallet at the same time:

What Decluttr Does

Log onto Decluttr’s website or download their smartphone app to start selling your stuff. On the website, you will be asked to enter the barcode on CDs, DVDs, games, and books to determine the price you’re eligible for.

Once you’ve entered your barcode, Decluttr will give you a price for the item. For instance, I was offered $1.40 for our single-disc edition of Pixar’s Up. You will need to enter at least $10 worth of stuff before you can complete your order.

Don’t forget that you can also sell tech gadgets. In that case, you type in the type of item you are selling and select from the search results. With each gadget that you enter, Decluttr will offer you a price based on the condition—good, poor, or faulty.

My husband’s 64 gb iPhone 6 for Verizon is worth $185 in good condition, $111 in poor condition, and $18.50 in faulty condition. I was glad to see that “good condition” is a pretty liberal description—it basically just has to still be working and have no more than light wear and tear.

Once you reach at least $10 worth of stuff, hit the “Complete Order” button, and Decluttr will provide you with a free shipping label. It is totally free to ship your stuff to Decluttr, no matter where you live in the U.S.

From there, throw your stuff in any box, slap on the label, and send it off via UPS. You will be paid the very next day after they receive and process the item, and their tech price promise guarantees that you will get the first price offered for your gadgets (or they’ll send your item back to you for free!).

You can receive your payment via PayPal, check, or direct deposit—or you can choose to donate your payment to charity.

After you have completed your first order, you will qualify for your own referral code. Pass the code along to your friends, and you’ll earn $10 when they register and complete an order. You can refer up to 10 friends, which equals a cool 100 bucks you could earn for free.

Decluttr by the Numbers

Decluttr paid out over $1.3 million to U.S. customers in January 2017 alone, and they buy approximately 35,000 items per day. In total, the program has paid out over $165 million to over 4 million customers in the UK (where Decluttr began as musicMagpie) and the U.S.

The average Decluttr order is about 60 items at a time, although you can sell up to 500 items in any single transaction. Decluttr just asks that you don’t cram more than 200 items into any one box. However, if you have more items than you can fit in one box in a single transaction, you can print off additional shipping labels for all the boxes you need for the order.

The Decluttr App

Using the app makes selling your stuff on Decluttr even easier. The Decluttr app, which is available for both Apple and Android, allows you to scan barcodes using your device’s camera—although you can still enter them manually on the app.

The app’s user interface is just as easy to navigate as the online version, and you can save your orders for later and complete it on any device. You can resume saved orders from previous sessions—just sign in and keep adding items.

The app also allows you to choose your free send option and offers you instant confirmation of your order.

Finally, all the FAQs and other technical support are available on the app, as well as access to the customer support team.

Potential Pitfalls

There are one or two potential downsides to using Decluttr, although they tend to be outnumbered by the benefits. Specifically, you should be aware that if you send a CD, DVD, Blu-ray, game, or book that is not in acceptable condition, Decluttr will not pay you and does not return the item to you.

The key things to look out for are damaged artwork and heavy scratches. Decluttr does look for every reason to accept the items as they go on to sell the items themselves.

Your CDs do need to still be in their jewel cases to be accepted, which I originally thought meant that I would not be able to sell any of my old music.

I moved all of my CDs from their jewel cases into binders about 10 or 15 years ago. But as long as you have kept the original artwork, Decluttr has assured me that you can place the good condition CDs and liner notes/artwork in a new jewel case and they will be accepted.

It’s important to note that unlike CDs, DVDs, and games, gadgets will be returned to you if they are not in the condition you described. If your gadget arrives in poorer condition than you described, Decluttr will make you a revised offer and give you the option of taking the smaller payment or receiving the gadget back, with free shipping.

The only possible beef that Decluttr users might have with the service is the length of time it takes to receive your payment–but this is due to UPS shipping your item. While your payment is processed the day after your items arrive at Decluttr, it can take 7-10 business days for your order to arrive depending on your distance from Decluttr’s Atlanta base.

This is just the fact of shipping, and Decluttr does its part to pay you as quickly as possible, but you should be aware of how the long the total process may take.

How Does Decluttr Stack Up Against Its Competitors?

Decluttr is not the only resale game in town, so I thought I’d take a look at how it compares to some of the other places you might unload your old Blackberry and Napoleon Dynamite DVD.

Amazon Trade-In—The biggest difference between Decluttr and Amazon is the fact that you are paid cash from Decluttr and gift cards from Amazon. That right there makes Decluttr a better deal for the vast majority of resellers.

In addition, Decluttr’s prices for good condition gadgets are higher than the prices offered by Amazon. Both services offer free shipping, and both services make it easy to sell your items. Since Amazon does not have a minimum resale requirement, you can trade in items with them on a more piecemeal basis than you can with Decluttr.

eBay/Craigslist—You are likely to make more money per item when you sell on eBay or Craigslist, but you will also have to do a great deal more work to make the sales happen. Not only will you have to take and post photos and write a description, but it will be up to you to individually wrap and mail each item that you sell. Add to that the fact that you may not sell everything, and it’s clear that these options are only better for those who are time-rich but cash-poor.

The Bottom Line

Decluttr’s slogan, “make room. make money.” does a great job of summing up the Decluttr experience. It is the easiest way to clear out your clutter, give your stuff a second life, and make money on the deal. Decluttr makes the otherwise tedious job of selling off unwanted items quick, painless, and lucrative.

A quick afternoon of “Decluttring” your stuff will leave you with a tidier house and a fatter wallet—which is a pretty good hat trick.