LeapTrade Review: 1 Leap Forward, Several Steps Back

The guys and gals over at leaptrade.com contacted me to review their site. They provided me a set amount of credits to use within their system, but because this is a website review and not a product review, there will be no attached score. Instead, I’ll be listing my pros and cons. Enjoy!

Pros:

-Trade credits better than any other store/website offerings

LeapTrade’s greatest advantage right now is their very generous offering in trade-in credits. That could be because the ecosystem doesn’t have the middleman that the other retailers do, but you certainly do get more bang for your buck here than you do going to places like Amazon, GameStop, etc. For reference,  I decided to take a look around using the game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare on PS4 as the example for trade in values to see who offered the most value below:

GameStop: $15.84 ($19.80 for Pro members)

Amazon: $14.61

Best Buy: $15.00

LeapTrade: $32.50

As you can see, LeapTrade’s value for the game is above and beyond the best value for trading in the game otherwise. Are the credits worth it though? More on that later.

-User-to-user direct trading

If you don’t want to trade games for credits, you can do a user-to-user trade instead. What’s nice about this is if you find another user with a game you want and don’t have the credits for, you can use this option to trade directly with them for a game out of your own collection.

-Games can be from any major platform from the last 30 years

Unlike most major retailers now, LeapTrade allows people to trade in, or trade for, any major console from the last 30 years, PC included. If you’re a classic gamer, they have a large amount of old-school titles that may be worth taking a look at (sorry Atari or 3D0 fans, they don’t have options for them on here).

Cons:

-Lack of current gen games

This may not be a con for everyone, but as a person who only has current gen consoles, the pickings are very slim on both Xbox One and PS4 (even WiiU). Most times these pages have anywhere from 3-10 games available at a single time right now, and as soon as something new comes on (GTA V for example) it immediately gets scooped up by someone. Everyone else is put into a request line for when another copy becomes available.

-Inactive users

One of the most frustrating things on the site right now is the inactive users who post their games for sale but never confirm an order. If there is only one copy of a game available, and the user doesn’t confirm the trade within 24 hours, it will reset the clock again for that user unless there is someone else who has the game, in that case it skips to them for another 24 hours. As a person who is ready to make a purchase here and now, that wait can hurt, and when they never confirm or cancel the trade it can be infuriating.

-Questionable customer support

This is coming from a personal experience I had with Leaptrade’s support team. I put a request in for a game Friday May 15th and was confirmed on Saturday. After waiting until the following Tuesday for the user to actually ship the game, I saw another game I wanted more I wanted to see if it was possible to cancel the trade and get my credits back. I posted in their support forum as well as emailed their support address and was told they were working on it and then Thursday morning I got an email from their support team telling me there was a “shipping delay” and that my game would be coming soon. They noted that I could cancel at anytime (but NOT after a user purchases a shipping label) so I was getting a game I did not want any longer and I’d either have to trade more games for credit or pay for more credits. As a customer service person in my past life, this response delay annoyed me to no end. Thankfully after a reply from myself and a bit of escalation the issue was resolved, but with proper handling from the support person, this issue wouldn’t have gotten as infuriating as it ended up being.

-Credits?

You can go about getting credits one of two ways: trading games for them, or buying them via PayPal or Amazon. The problem is, unlike the other retailers (even GameStop who they try to compare themselves to) you can be stuck with credit and nothing to use it on. At least with places like GameStop I can put my credit towards other things like reserving a game or buying another game, not so with LeapTrade. Even by requesting another game, you can’t know for sure if you’ll ever get it.

Final Thoughts

LeapTrade has a lot going for it for sure, but until some of these cons are fixed, it would be hard for me to give a full seal of approval for their services. I can see the appeal for other people to use the site and urge others to give it a try, just be sure you know what you are getting into before you make the leap (pun intended).