Summary

  • Cricket Wireless offers a new trade-in program with Asurion to exchange old devices for credits on your service bill.
  • You can trade in devices online or at a retailer and receive credits directly applied to your bill in 1-2 billing cycles.
  • Unlike other carriers, you don’t need to purchase a new phone or change your plan to participate in Cricket’s trade-in program.

Got an old phone gathering dust in a drawer? You might be able to turn that forgotten tech into savings on your Cricket Wireless bill. The prepaid carrier is rolling out a new trade-in program, giving you the chance to exchange your used devices for credits applied directly to your service bill.

The new trade-in program is in partnership with Asurion, allowing you to exchange your old devices for credits that will be applied directly to your service bills. This is a welcome addition, as MVNOs like Cricket–who uses AT&T’s network–typically don’t offer programs like this, and it has some advantages over what others offer.

You can trade in your old devices either online or at a Cricket Authorized Retailer. If you do it online, you’ll receive an envelope in the mail to send your old device in. The value of your device will be determined during the trade-in process. While Cricket may accept phones with cracks or other issues, these will affect the amount of credit you’ll get. If Cricket doesn’t accept the device, it will be returned within 48 hours.

Apple iPhone SE 2022.

Related

Why Carriers Are Desperate to Buy Your Old Phone

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve probably seen the outrageous trade-in deals offered by carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. These deals show up in TV advertisements, automated emails and text messages, and even on billboards. But why are carriers so desperate to buy your old phone?

Unlike other programs that offer gift cards, Cricket directly credits the trade-in value to your account, which will reflect within one to two billing cycles. You don’t need to purchase a new phone or change your plan to participate, making it an easy way to save money.

That last point is a big deal. Trade-in offers from the big carriers–AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon–almost exclusively align with making some sort of big change. So, if you have old devices lying around, they’re only valuable in those situations. But maybe you don’t need a new phone or a different plan.

Cricket trade-in offer.

Out of curiosity, I punched in a few phones on the Device Trade-In page to see how much Cricket would estimate the trade-in is worth. Here are the numbers with devices in good, working condition, unlocked, and without scratches or cracks.

  • Apple iPhone 16 128GB: $419
  • Apple iPhone 12 64GB: $88
  • Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 1TB: $446
  • Samsung Galaxy Fold 512GB: $33
  • Samsung Galaxy A70 128GB: $10
  • Motorola Moto Edge 5G (2024) 256GB: $66
  • Google Pixel 8 Pro 128GB: $176
  • Google Pixel 4 64GB: $17

I was able to find most of the devices I looked for, with the exception of the Pixel 9 series. As expected, the best trade-in offers are for iPhones. Even when I entered the absolute top-of-the-line Samsung phone, the Galaxy S24 Ultra with 1TB of storage, it barely beat out the base iPhone 16. Brand new, the S24 Ultra is nearly $1,000 more than the iPhone 16.

Again, even if the trade-in prices aren’t the best in the world, the key thing is you don’t need to be shelling out money for a new phone to take advantage of these offers. If you’ve got some old phones lying around taking up space, they could knock some money off your next phone bill.

Source: Cricket