Ebay Shuts Down Instant Sale Service For Cash Trade-Ins On Phones And Other Gadgets

Ebay, the online marketplace that recently added a redesign reminiscent of Pinterest to enhance a personalized experience for its users, is paring down in other areas. Among them, the site has discontinued its Instant Sale service, a program for users to quickly trade in used consumer electronics for cash, with the electronics then resold by eBay working with a third party. Instant Sale, eBay noted in February, had racked up some 4 million offers since being rolled out commercially in the U.S. in 2011.

It looks like Instant Sale is a direct casualty of eBay's forays into other ways of presenting its products.

"Based on the results of recent eBay selling pilots, as well as our development of more simplified and personalized selling experiences, we have discontinued the eBay Instant Sale trade-in program in North America, and continue to focus on developing new, simplified and streamlined mobile and online selling experiences," a spokesperson wrote to TechCrunch in an emailed statement. "We are also continuing to work with our partner CExchange to explore additional selling options and programs to offer customers the best value and selling experiences."

Now, the main landing page for eBay's Instant Sale service now redirects to eBay's homepage, and the links for Instant Sale on pages to sell gadgets now all also redirect back to the homepage, too.

Ebay's partner in the service, AllTechWholesale, tells us that eBay discontinued the service on February 28. "At this time the program has been discontinued but that may change in the future," the company wrote in an email. "We were only informed that the last day for the instant sale page would be 2/28/13," it wrote in answer to a question about when the change took place, and why.

We still trying to determine if the program has also been discontinued in Germany, the other market where eBay had activated the service.

Instant Sale first launched as a pilot in October 2010 as a way for users to trade in their electronics quickly for cash without waiting until they get sold...

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