Every other page on this site says some version of the same thing: tell us what is wrong, the fault lowers the offer, we still buy it. Folding phones are the exception, and rather than bury that in a terms page we would rather explain it properly.
We buy the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip sealed and unopened. Used ones we decline, including ones in genuinely immaculate condition. Here is why.
The inner screen is not like other screens
A normal phone display is a rigid panel behind glass. A folding display is a plastic laminate designed to bend, protected by a factory-applied film that is part of the assembly rather than a screen protector you can replace.
That laminate is flexing thousands of times. It is wearing every single day the phone is used normally, and unlike a crack there is no moment where the damage happens and you know about it. It accumulates.
The failures arrive late, and that is the whole problem
If used foldables failed on arrival, this would be easy: we would test them, price the working ones, and decline the rest exactly as we do with every other phone.
They do not. A used Fold can arrive with a hinge that feels smooth, a panel with no visible lines, and nothing to declare, and then develop a dead band along the fold three months later in somebody else's hands. That is not a rare outcome, and no amount of testing on our bench predicts it.
The repair is the most expensive Samsung does
On a folding Galaxy the inner display and the hinge are effectively one assembly. You do not replace a panel, you replace the mechanism it is bonded into, and the bill is the highest in Samsung's range by a distance.
So a failure after resale is not a small warranty claim. On a four-figure phone it can cost more than the device was resold for.
We will not sell a phone we cannot stand behind
Everything we buy gets resold, and everything we resell carries a warranty. That is the actual constraint. A used foldable is a device we cannot honestly warranty, because the thing most likely to fail is invisible at the point of sale.
We could price that risk in, and the offer would be so low it would read as an insult. We think declining honestly is the better version of the same answer.
What is not the reason
The crease is not the reason. Every folding phone has one, it deepens with age on all of them, it is normal wear rather than damage, and anybody using it to knock down your price is having you on.
Cosmetic condition is not the reason either. A scuffed Fold and a flawless one get the same answer from us, which is the clearest possible sign that this is about the mechanism rather than the appearance.
- The crease: normal, not damage, not why we decline
- Scratches and scuffs: irrelevant to this decision
- A cracked cover screen: genuinely cheap to fix, and still not the issue
- The inner panel and hinge: this is the entire reason
What to do with a used Fold or Flip instead
Sell it privately, and you will almost certainly do better than any buyback would have offered even without this policy. People who want a folding phone want one specifically rather than shopping on price, and the Flip in particular has a strong private market in South Africa.
Be straight in the listing about how the hinge feels and whether there is anything happening along the fold. The buyer is taking on the same risk we declined, and they deserve to know that.
If the rest of the drawer is Samsung, we will still buy all of it, in whatever condition it is in, in the same free collection. The restriction is specific to folding phones and nothing else.
Sealed ones, though, we want
An unopened Fold or Flip is one of the better numbers on this site. There is no used inner screen to worry about, so the entire objection disappears.
Sealed means factory shrink-wrap intact, seals unbroken, never activated. A phone that was opened, set up once and put back in the box is a used phone. Proof of purchase is required, as it is on any sealed device in any category.
The short version
We buy the Z Fold and Z Flip sealed and unopened only. The inner folding screen wears with normal use, fails late rather than on arrival, and comes bonded to the hinge in the most expensive repair Samsung does, so we cannot warranty a used one on resale. The crease and the cosmetic condition have nothing to do with it. A used foldable is worth more to a private buyer than to us anyway, and every other Samsung we still buy in any condition.