Ziffit or Music Magpie - Which is worth your time? A comprehensive review.

When you work in a Music/DVD shop you will obviously come to acquire a lot of that media over the years. I've worked in that industry for nine years now and the amount of DVDs, CDs and games I've found myself in possession of is insane.

Fairly recently I came to the conclusion that a clear out needed to be had. With DVDs sitting on a shelf for years and never being watched, I finally decided 'do I really need them?' - Of course the answer is 'no'. So I turned to the trade in apps/websites to make some extra cash for my trip to New York in January.

I'd used Music Magpie in the past and always found their prices to be on the laughable side when trading in a small amount, but when you trade in a high amount, it doesn't seem too bad. Then there is Ziffit, which is more on the new side and a site that I'd never used before.

Selling

Firstly, I started to scan items using the Music Magpie app. This was the easier to use of the two apps provided by the two companies. I got rid of almost £300 worth of stuff and considering they generally only give you 20p-50p per item, I think that gives you an idea of how much stuff I had to sell. I had to break my order up into two separate trades as you can only scan a certain number of items in one trade. One thing I did NOT trade with Music Magpie was boxsets. 30p for a boxset with 6 DVDs in it? Not happening.
Date Trade Created -  27th May 2015

I then found the trade in site Ziffit. I'd seen the adverts for it on TV and thought it looked interesting because as well as taking in DVDs, CDs and games, it also took books. One things I will say though, don't waste your time attempting to trade books in. Unless they're brand new out, the site will just decline to take them. Not great when it appeared to be one of the selling points of the advert. Anyway, I thought I would give Ziffit a go with my boxsets and a few other things that I found in the shed. For a start, the price they gave for boxsets was much improved over Music Magpie, getting £1+ for each that I traded in. I also managed to find a code that gave you an extra 10% on top of your trade in value so it took my total up to £180.
Date Trade Created - 25th June 2015


Collection


When it came to collecting the items, neither was exactly a smooth ride. With Music Magpie, the driver that came to pick up the trade was only expecting one box... when actually there were nine. Anyway, the driver did end up taking the boxes and they went on their merry way.
The issue I had with Ziffit was two fold. Firstly, once I completed my order it said that the trade would be collected by CityLink, now if you've watched the news over the past year, you'll have seen that CityLink no longer exists. Would it really have taken Ziffit that long to update their website to say the correct courier? The other issue was the time frame. The earliest they would collect my trade was a week after the trade was created. That might not sound too bad, but when you have six boxes in your living room... it can become slightly annoying. They did eventually show up on time and took away my boxes.

Quality Control

This is the process that usually makes people angry (seriously, read the Tweets to both of these companies, they all say the same thing). Quality control is where they check your items to make sure they are resell-able. All I will say is - Don't hold your breath for getting the amount of money they quoted you originally from either company. Now, I work in a shop that sells CDs, DVDs & games and also trades them in, so I know exactly what is classified as an acceptable quality so wouldn't bother to send items that I wouldn't accept myself if someone were to trade them in. Somehow though, both sites ended up docking money off my trade value for 'rejected items'. Music Magpie accepted a lot of singles through the app, but then took them off my trade when they received them saying they weren't accepted format. Why allow me to scan them in, then? Why give me a price?
Ziffit was the more annoying of the two. They rejected items for 'not being the original disc' when I don't own any copied discs and could even show them the Amazon invoice for said items that were bought brand new. There were other items that were rejected because they were 'promo copies', again, I could tell them exactly where I got them from (HMV, Woolworths etc) and could tell them they were not promo copies. I emailed them this query and it was simply brushed aside.


Payment

Ah, payment. Wouldn't that be nice? You've taken the time to trade in your goods that you bought with your hard earned cash for pittance and it would be great to receive the money you're owed, right? That is the dream, but with one of these companies, do not expect that money in your bank account within a month or even longer, despite the advert saying 'you could have money in your bank within 7 days' HAHA laughable to say the least.

When it comes to Music Magpie, this is their main issue. When you search their Twitter mentions, this is what you see. "Where is my payment?" - "You've had my items for over a month.. still waiting to be paid" etc etc.
Yes, the process from MM is FAR TOO SLOW. It took 20 days for them to even start quality checking my items! 20 days! They then make you re-confirm your bank details before they will send payment... which takes even longer. They say once you've confirmed your bank details your money should be with you within 7 days. No it wasn't. I had to pester them on Twitter for them to actually send the money.
Music Magpie - Trade created 27th May - Date money in bank account - 10th July.

Now when it comes to Ziffit, the process was much quicker. There were no issues and the order was checked and paid much more swiftly. There was no hounding them on Twitter that I had to do. At least the turnaround on Ziffit it much better than Music Magpie.

Ziffit - Trade created 25th June - Date money in bank account - 15th July.

So, in summary, if I was to use a trade in site again it would have to be Ziffit. Although I don't agree with some of their quality control decisions, I think the company as a whole is a much better outfit. It took three weeks longer to trade with Music Magpie and this wasn't just because of the size of my trade; a friend of mine was waiting over a month for a trade that totaled £20.

So there you have it. Ziffit is the trade in site for me, but always be prepared for bumps in the road. Having the boxes stuck in the house for a week wasn't great, but once they had my items, they were dealt with quickly and I had my money within a decent time frame.