Moments ago Amazon announced that its Trade-In program will now accept consumer electronics. That means anyone who wants to trade-in consumer electronics, along with other goods, can send a box to Amazon and receive an Amazon gift card in exchange. Amazon originally launched its trade-in program in 2009, and until now it only accepted games, text books, and movies. “We want to give customers the opportunity to get great value from their used electronics,” said Paul Ryder, vice president of electronics at Amazon. “Hundreds of thousands of customers have already received millions of dollars in gift cards from the other products in our program.  The Electronics category is a natural extension and we are delighted to offer our customers more trade-in options.” We gave the service a quick test and noticed that a 16GB black iPhone 4 on AT&T could bring in as much as $314.50. An original 30GB Microsoft Zune? Just $25. Hit the jump for the full release.

Amazon Trade-In Program Expands With Thousands of Electronics

Great Trade-In Values on Used Textbooks, Video Games, Movies and now Electronics

Ship For Free, All in One Box

SEATTLE, May 18, 2011 — Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced the Electronics Trade-In Store, offering customers a new way to conveniently trade in used electronics for Amazon.com Gift Cards.  The Electronics Trade-In Store enhances Amazon’s existing Trade-In program, giving customers great value on everything from video games and DVDs to textbooks and now electronics, without visiting multiple stores.  Starting today, customers can trade in electronics, including tablets, cell phones, MP3 players, cameras, GPS devices and more.  With Amazon Trade-In, only one box is needed to ship multiple items and shipping is free.  Simply visit http://www.amazon.com/tradein and start searching for items to trade in.

“Technology is constantly evolving and newer, better versions of consumer electronics are introduced all the time,” says Paul Ryder, vice president of Electronics for Amazon.com.  “We want to give customers the opportunity to get great value from their used electronics.  Hundreds of thousands of customers have already received millions of dollars in gift cards from the other products in our program.  The Electronics category is a natural extension and we are delighted to offer our customers more trade-in options.”

Regardless of where electronics and other products may have been purchased, customers start by simply searching for items to trade in.  If the product is listed as eligible for trade-in, then customers can click the Trade-In button to add items to their trade-in shipment.  Amazon’s Trade-In program offers a variety of condition types including “Like New,” “Good” and “Acceptable,” giving customers an easy way to view multiple trade-in values.  Once customers have added all the items they would like to trade in to their trade-in shipment, they can print a pre-paid shipping label and ship everything for free.  After the product is received and inspected, an Amazon.com Gift Card will be deposited into the customer’s Amazon.com account, generally in less than 48 hours.  There are no claim codes or waiting for a check in the mail.  Amazon.com Gift Cards can be used on purchases towards millions of items on Amazon.com.

Amazon’s Trade-In program (http://www.amazon.com/tradein) offers great value on used products, and starting today, customers can now trade in used electronics.

Amazon.com Gift Cards are issued by ACI Gift Cards, Inc., a Washington company.

Ok, someone please tell Nelson Muntz he’s on in five… Now that Z2K has come and gone, we have to sit back and wonder how something so widespread could have such a simple fix – wait till it dies, then turn it back on. For real? The good thing, we suppose, was that if there were people who couldn’t manage their way to Google to search for an answer, their Zunes would eventually just start working again. The bad thing of course, was that the cause of the problem was probably something bush league. Indeed – here is the explanation from itsnotabigtruck of Zune Boards:

The Zune’s real-time clock stores the time in terms of days and seconds since January 1st, 1980. When the Zune’s clock is accessed, the driver turns the number of days into years/months/days and the number of seconds into hours/minutes/seconds. Likewise, when the clock is set, the driver does the opposite.

The Zune frontend first accesses the clock toward the end of the boot sequence. Doing this triggers the code that reads the clock and converts it to a date and time. Below is the part of this code that determines the year component of the date:

…

Under normal circumstances, this works just fine. The function keeps subtracting either 365 or 366 until it gets down to less than a year’s worth of days, which it then turns into the month and day of month. Thing is, in the case of the last day of a leap year, it keeps going until it hits 366. Thanks to the if (days > 366), it stops subtracting anything if the loop happens to be on a leap year. But 366 is too large to break out of the main loop, meaning that the Zune keeps looping forever and doesn’t do anything else.

Here it comes… Haaa haaa! The affected source code causing this bug can also be found in a few other portables such as Toshiba’s S series. If you happen to be one of the few people out there with one of those puppies and you haven’t resolved the issue by now, the fix is the same so don’t fret. We have to imagine Microsoft will have a fix in place before 2012, the next leap year, but this was a massive bungle that Redmond certainly can’t wait to be forgotten. Sure most people will forget, but we wonder if a bad enough taste was left in the mouths of Zune owners to make them think about jumping ship. Some will, no doubt, but we don’t imagine any hardcore anti-iPod people will have their allegiance swayed.

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