Google needs to get serious about selling refurbished Pixel phones

Google is finally selling refurbished Pixel phones on its own web store like many other phone makers do. This is great to see because the last thing this world needs is another 500 grams of e-waste in a landfill when it can be repaired and resold. It would be even better if Google were serious about it.

I love the idea of buying a refurbished phone. You get a warranty from the manufacturer and you can trust that anything wrong with the hardware was addressed by someone who knows what they are doing so it works like it is supposed to work. You don't get that when you buy a used phone, so a lot of folks will spend a little more for a phone that was made whole once returned.

There's a right way to do it, and then there is the way Google is doing it.

A look at the phones currently for sale highlights the problems with Google's strategy. We see the Pixel 6a, Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 7, and Pixel 7 Pro. You might already notice the first issue: three of these five phones will not get updated to Android 16.

The Pixel 6 series phones will stop seeing platform updates in October 2024, or within days after this article was written. They will still get security updates until 2026, which I think are more important than version updates, but most people don't see it that way. Buying a "good as new" phone directly from Google and not having access to some of the new features we see just a year later with the new OS upgrade will sour a lot of buyers on the program.

It's tough because those phones are likely very usable and would be great for a lot of people. Just not the people buying a phone direct from Google, who are most likely tech enthusiasts and care about new features and Android versions.

I don't know what Google should do with these phones. I know what I would do if I were independently and fabulously wealthy like Google's executive leadership: donate them. Fix them, and give them to people in need across the world. Then again, I'm not trying to make money selling phones, so maybe my opinion doesn't matter here.

The other, and potentially bigger, problem is the prices. I wouldn't buy a refurbished phone from Google for the amount it is asking because it's too much.

You can buy a brand new Pixel 7 Pro cheaper than what Google is asking for a refurbished Pixel 6 Pro. Brand new, still in the wrapper, and a model year newer. Oh, and it will be updated to Android 16, too. If you want to spend $539 buy the Pixel 7 Pro for $399 and some good earbuds instead of spending it on a refurbished phone that's a year older.

It's easy to laugh and think this is just Google being Google again, but this is a serious problem. By pricing these phones so high, people aren't going to buy them. Google isn't going to keep them forever, and in the end, they end up being stripped of any material that's easy to get while the rest goes into a landfill.

I don't know about you, but I want to leave this place better for my grandchildren. There is no stopping the consumerism mindset that's overtaken so many people, so we have to figure out something. We love to buy stuff, even when we can still use the stuff we already have. The companies that entice us into buying the stuff have a responsibility to try and figure out what happens to it all once we're done with it. Fixing it up and reselling it is a great idea, but doing it this way isn't.

Google can afford to sell these refurbs dirt cheap and it gets even more eyeballs on Google's services so Google makes even more money selling ads. I don't know why the company won't do it, but it should.