OnePlus had recently introduced a limited-period buyback programme for its latest offering, the OnePlus 6T for Rs 199. The OnePlus Assured Upgrade gives the OnePlus buyers an opportunity to exchange their old OnePlus smartphone (6T) for almost 70 per cent of the buying value when they upgrade to the future OnePlus smartphone.
The offer is currently available only for OnePlus 6T. Incidentally, OnePlus is not the only brand that gives you assured buyback on their current smartphones, Google did the same with its Pixel lineup. However, is it just a marketing gimmick or actually a genuine offer for its customers? Let’s take a look
What is OnePlus Assured Upgrade?
As the name suggests, OnePlus is offering a limited period offer for its potential buyers to opt for a OnePlus device with a promise of getting a pre-defined value of the smartphone when they opt for a future OnePlus smartphone.
Customers will get a maximum of 70 percent of the purchase value of the OnePlus 6T if it is exchanged between 3 and 5 months from the date of purchase, 55 percent of the purchase value for the exchange period between 6 and 8 months and minimum of 40 percent for period between 9 to 12 months from purchase date of the device.
How much buyback value will you get for your OnePlus 6T variant?
Starting with the base OnePlus 6T variant, users will get an assured buyback of Rs 26,600 if the device is 3-5 months old, Rs 15,200 if the device is 6-8 months old and Rs 15,200 if the device is 9-12 months old. Similarly for 8GB+ 128GB model you will get Rs 29,400, Rs 23, 100 and Rs 16,800 for 3-5 months old, 6-8 months old and 9-12 months model. The high-end 8GB + 256GB model comes with an assured buyback guarantee of Rs 32,200 for 3-5 months old device, Rs 25,300 for 6-8 months old device and Rs 18,400 for 9-12 months old device.
Critical questions remained unanswered!
Though the exchange program sounds lucrative there are some critical questions based on different scenarios which a customer may encounter. To get answers for the same we had dropped a questionnaire to OnePlus, hoping to get the answers. The response from OnePlus was a letdown as the company just shared with us a blog post, which was a plain vanilla post withoutany information pertaining to the question we asked.
Questions that remained unanswered:
Q1. Will the Assured Upgrade programme be extended to consumers who have purchased the device from authorised stores other that OnePlus Experience stores?
Q2. What will be done with OnePlus 6T smartphone bought under this programme?
Q3. What will happen when your partner Servify refuses to pay the pre-defined buyback amount on the OnePlus 6T?
Terms and Condition of OnePlus Assured programme!
This is where things get interesting. Under the Terms and Conditions section of the Amazon page, you will find out important points if you want to buy the OnePlus 6T with the latest programme. As per the company, the program is available only on Amazon. The most important thing to note here is that if you fail to present the box, charger or other accessories of the OnePlus 6T during the buyback of a future OnePlus smartphone, the offer will become null and void. This means that even if you forgot to give the dongle that comes bundled with the box, there are high chances that the offer will be cancelled.
Secondly, the OS should not be rooted or modified by the user and the body of the smartphone should not in damaged or broken condition. This simply means that if your OnePlus 6T gets a dent when it, the offer will not be applicable. Other terms include that the display should not have a dead pixel or a black spot. Most importantly, the original box should not hold any tears or dents. If this and the other lists of terms and conditions are not met then the pickup of the device and delivery of the Second Smartphone will be cancelled and you will not be entitled to avail the benefits under the Program. Seems to be fair enough because the terms and conditions are more or less the same in one wants to sell their old phones in the offline or online market.
OnePlus assured versus the rest!
Apart from Servify, which is the official partner of OnePlus for the exchange program, there are many other platforms in the country which buy old smartphones. So we compared the prices offered by them for your old OnePlus 6T keeping the return period and all the other conditions, like the box, accessories, and so on, same.
We checked the base model of OnePlus 6T with 6GB RAM and 128GB of internal storage on Cashify and got an asking price of Rs 26,700 with 0-3 months old being the standard. However, for 3-6 months time, the asking price was Rs. 23,450. Similarly, there was another site known as RecycleDevice, which gave us the price of Rs 26,396 for the base variant of OnePlus 6T. Cashit and SahiValue gave us an asking price of Rs 23,256 and Rs 30,000 respectively. Whereas, Budli and Sell n Cash did not list any OnePlus 6T variant for selling.
We did above exercise to let our readers know that if they plan to sell their old smartphone their couple of option which can be explored and apart from that is no compulsion of buying a new device from any particular handset brand. Also, one doesn’t need to pay any fee ( in the case on OnePlus exchange program one has to pay Rs199).
So, is it a marketing gimmick or a genuine offer?
The OnePlus Assured Upgrade programme is well thought of a strategy to retain the customer base. Though it is not first of its kind but definitely worth appreciating. We feel if detailed information could be shared by the brand about the program related to the queries we highlighted in the earlier part of the story will give more clarity to OnePlus 6T users so that they can judge it for themselves if it a genuine offer or a marketing gimmick.Having said that, users who don’t want to make OnePlus as their next purchase this offer is worth nothing.