Recommended cell phone marketplace?

It looks like I need to replace one of my phones, and I'd rather not buy a brand new phone and purchase a lightly used phone instead. I also don't really fancy buying something off FB Marketfarce lest I wake up in a dark alleyway with a headache and no wallet.

I know about Swappa, obviously there's eBay, and a few other marketplaces I'm not aware of. Any recommendations?

My only one i have experience with is Swappa, but when i used em i was tremendously satisfied 

I have gotten several from Amazon refurbished. One had a battery below 80%, so they gave me a credit for 20% of the price, or offered to exchange it. 

In reply to bbbbRASS :

Didn't consider Amazon renewed, looks like the prices aren't too bad there.

I've had success with eBay buying from refurbishers. It's more expensive than fb, but at least has some buyer protections. 
 

what kind of phone are you looking for?

In reply to lnlogauge :

One with current security updates . I'm trying to avoid the usual discussion that seems to follow cellphone questions, plus it kinda depends which of my two phones (Android or iPhone) I end up replacing with a newer one. The main requirement really is "works with Google Fi".

I have bought a handful of phones off of Gazelle off of a recomendation from someone on here.

Dragging this up again. Any experience with Backmarket?

It looks like pretty much everyone is aligned in prices so I figured I'd go where I have the best chance of getting something that's as described. 

In reply to BoxheadTim :

Yes, my wife and I both bought phones from Backmarket.

 Everything was dandy, with a couple of quasi-issues worth noting. Her most recent iPhone (2nd from Backmarket) initially seemed to have an issue getting out of the intro screens, but she got past it. No idea what the issue was, but it didn't require follow-up.

 The other is that I ordered a plus-size iPhone and received a regular sized one. Which turned out to be awesome because I'd mixed up the sizes. IIRC they refunded me something like the average market delta on the sizes.

 At this point if I were phone shopping my impulse would be to go there and save myself the agony of some marketplaces, but then I haven't priced a phone since the recent... stuff.

Swappa if I'm buying refurb, used, or even sometimes new.  Now that I've been on Google Fi as my service, I just get directly from them.  Good pricing and no bloatware.

I'm back to only using Swappa, and here's why.

Its not that hard to put a new battery in a phone and call it "refurbished," but chances are it's not going to be OE quality AND you just opened up the phone, which, IME, can be akin to taking apart a car interior: it's not always perfectly sealed  afterward. Therefore I only want to buy a phone with an OE battery. 
 

Swappa alone (of the places I've tried, incl NewEgg, Amazon, eBay, Gazelle, Marketplace, BestBuy) has a column for phone battery health. If I find a 4 y/o phone with 100% health, I can know it has a cheap new battery in it that won't last.

And you're buying one exact phone that you can ask questions about.

And you're typically dealing with individuals - even the flippers - who can get you info about that phone, incl if it has an older OS, like if you prefer to not have your used phone upgraded to an OS that's beyond its hardware capabilities. 

Ended up using Swappa. Let's see if the phone arrives and is in the expected (and described) condition.

Thanks to all for your recommendations and feedback.

In reply to BoxheadTim :

They do a great job of holding sellers accountable to resolving issues, in the unlikely event that it comes to that for you. 

In reply to P3PPY :

That's good to know. I bought from a seller with a lot of good feedback so hopefully that's not going to be an issue, but one never knows these days.