Julianna Yau’s blog

Disclaimer: this isn’t a paid post, although I am happy to be reimbursed by after the fact…

For the past year, I have been trying to sell my first-generation Nomad Jukebox Zen. Because it uses a hard drive (instead of flash memory) and is considered humongous by today’s standards (it’s about the size of a Walkman), no one would take it from me.

Through one of the 20+ blogs to which I’m subscribed, I discovered SecondRotation. I must admit I was skeptical about it at first, mainly because it seemed too good to be true. It was offering me $50US for the Zen, which was more than I expected to get from it (after posting it with no responses on Kijiji and Craigslist over several months). Subtract the$13 I paid for shipping, and it’s still a good deal.

After going through their price estimate system (which was very straightforward) and selecting my payment option (cheque or PayPal; I opted for PayPal), I printed a shipping label and received an auto-confirmation by email.

The confirmation email had a very puzzling “Expires On” date, which was five calendar days from the issue date.  I didn’t expect the package to be delivered to them by the expiration date, but sent it anyway. I also contacted SecondRotation through their website to ask about the expiration date, but have yet to hear anything back from them. That was the only blip in the communication process.

I received an email about a-week-and-a-half later, indicating that they had received the Zen and would be inspecting it to ensure it matches the description I provided. Oddly enough, the tracking number from Canada Post still doesn’t reflect that the package has been delivered.

Twenty minutes later, I received an email from SecondRotation saying that they had completed the inspection and would be issuing my money in 5-10 business days. That was on a Friday.

The following Thursday, I received two emais from SecondRotation, notifying me that they had sent the money to my PayPal account. I logged into PayPal, and confirmed the money was received.

Total time elapsed: 2-and-a-half weeks, including a 1-and-a-half week shipment time across the border.

Aside from the absence of free shipping for Canada, their main caveat is they aren’t accepting everything yet. I have a basic Creative webcam I want to unload, and although they accept Creative webcams, they don’t accept the model I have. They also accept many cell phone models, but seemingly only models sold in the US.

Now if only they would take my laserdisc player.

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