I don't want to get into a discussion here about phone subsidies and the "free" upgrade which is really just a method of locking the person into another year's contract - they are paying for the phone but it's a hidden cost and many people simply can't do the math of £25 per month multiplied by 18 months. If you buy one of these, you're buying something that someone else hasn't really paid for yet!! I too have benefitted from this, I've not bought a brand new phone in more than 10 years, since there are a lot of people who change their phone for the sake of it!

However, yes, people buying phones on contract and then deciding on something else does mean that there is a bigger supply of used devices to be sold. Many of the items listed are vodafone ones, so it's definitely happening. Amusingly, some state the phone is locked and can be unlocked cheaply, I would guess these are people who know nothing about the n900 at all!

There have been surprisingly few obvious scams, but there are quite a few offered by people with very low feedback ratings, this doesn't seem to deter too many bidders.