Estate planning as a Gazelle account holder

Gazelle is a consumer-electronics trade-in service: a customer ships in a used phone, tablet, or other device, Gazelle inspects it, and pays the agreed offer by check, PayPal, or an Amazon gift card. It is a transactional service — there is no ongoing account balance, stored value, or loyalty currency, so each trade-in is a separate one-off transaction. The estate-relevant asset is a pending trade-in payment: a device that was sent in but not yet paid, or a payment that was issued (a check in the mail, a PayPal transfer, or a gift-card email) but not yet received or cashed.

ecoATM, LLC (doing business as Gazelle) reviews transfer requests for Gazelle payment on a case-by-case basis after the account holder's death. Approval is at the company's sole discretion, and documentation requirements must be met before any transfer is considered.

What happens at death

Gazelle does not publish a deceased-customer or estate-succession process, and its Terms & Conditions contain no death, estate, or account-transfer provision. The service is transactional rather than balance-based: Gazelle holds no ongoing account balance, stored value, or loyalty currency, so the only estate-relevant asset is a one-off pending trade-in payment — a device that was shipped in but not yet paid, or a payment that was already issued (a check in the mail, a PayPal transfer, or an Amazon gift-card email) but not yet received or cashed. Because that payment is money Gazelle owes for an accepted trade-in, the estate may seek to recover it by contacting Gazelle support with the trade-in order number and documentation of the death and of the requester's authority to act for the estate. Gazelle reviews such requests individually rather than through a published procedure, so the policy is classified as case-by-case. The Terms note that an offer for a product is non-transferable, and that unclaimed funds may be subject to collection by governmental authorities under applicable unclaimed-funds and escheat laws — so a payment left unclaimed could eventually escheat rather than remain available indefinitely.