Did Samsung Just Pull a Fast One Pre-Launch?

Samsung got a ton of press last week for its $600 Galaxy Note 10 trade-in offer, but that deal has mysteriously disappeared from its Note 10 reservation page. Was it too good to be true? Why no explanation?

For those who don’t know, here’s how the deal worked: reserve the Note 10 by August 7 and get up to $600 for your old phone. It was a killer deal because many of the phones on the list are worth considerably less than $600.

We know, because we routinely monitor trade in deals and took note because it was one of the best we’ve ever seen. In fact, we have some of the top buyback offers on the market and Samsung’s deal beat some of them by $100 to $200.

But now, Samsung has replaced the $600 trade in values with verbiage that says special trade in prices will be revealed on August 7. Will they honor their original $600 offer? Are better offers to come? Or will the offers be less?

Here’s how the original Samsung deal compared to buyback stores:

MODEL	SAMSUNG	FLIPSY	GAZELLE	USELL
iPhone XS Max 64GB	$600	$688	$489	$642
iPhone XR 64GB	$600	$468	$331	$410
iPhone XS 64GB	$600	$584	$406	$551
iPhone X 64GB	$600	$500	$330	$405
Galaxy S10 128GB	$600	$485	$384	$365
Galaxy Note 9 128GB	$600	$425	$286	$300

If you want to be eligible for Samsung’s special trade in pricing, you need to commit to reserving the Note 10 by August 7. After that, you’ll be invited to complete your pre-order. The phone likely won’t ship until late August, but you won’t need to send your old phone in until 15 days after your Note 10 arrives.

But the question remains…. what, exactly, is Samsung offering? We might need to wait until August 7 to find out.

Update: BGR seemed to think we said Samsung’s promotion is off. We did not mean to imply that in any way. Samsung still has a promotion, yes, but it’s not clear how much they’ll pay for used phones since they have removed trade in prices. This could impact where people choose to buy the Note 10 and trade in their used phones. We’re simply asking: is it the same deal? If not, what changed?