What’s going on with DealTree? They handle Nokia’s “Trade-up” program, which reimburses you cash for your old phones. It says clearly on the “how it works” page as well as in their terms and conditions that they’ll mail a paper check to you after confirming your phone’s value. In Paul’s case, they say dumped his money into a PayPal account—and Paul says there’s nothing in his account and PayPal has no record of a transaction.

OK, here’s the story. The wife and I decided to get new phones. We went to Nokiausa.com and read about their trade up program. The program works like this: You estimate the condition of your phone. You print out a shipping label and send your phone to the company, which is operated by Dealtree. Phone 1 and Phone 2 were assigned a value of $134 each. Fast forward to June 19, 2009. I get an e-mail stating the following for each phone:

Thank you for using the Dealtree trade-in process. We have processed a payment to your paypal id xx@xx.com. Details of the transaction: Dealtree Trade-in: 1595xx Payment amount: $134.00 Paypal Userid Paid: xx@xx.com Paypal Transaction ID: 3001154 Dealtree Customer Support NokiaTradeup@eztradein.com

I was curious, I never gave them my PayPal account e-mail address. I was expecting a “paper check”. I logged into my PayPal account, no money. Where is my $268? I added the e-mail address listed in the e-mail to my account, no money. I call PayPal, they state that no such transaction ID exists. It is not looking good.

Paul contacted DealTree to ask what’s going on, but he’s still waiting for a response.

(Photo: faeryboots)

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