Zhuanzhuan (转转)

Is Zhuanzhuan safe?

Zhuanzhuan is reasonably safe for buying a used phone in China, safer than an open marketplace, because the company now sits in the middle of almost every sale. The catches are data and trust in its own checks. The app collects a lot from your phone, keeps face data for five years, and in 2026 several buyers found faults that its "official inspection" had missed. We score it 48/100, ahead of Xianyu (41) and close to Mercari (49).

Zhuanzhuan (转转, "turn it over") started in 2015 inside 58.com, the Chinese classifieds group, and merged with the phone reseller Zhaoliangji in 2020. Its App Store listing has about 3.2 million ratings in China, and the company said in April 2026 that it was considering a stock market listing.

The end of person-to-person sales

The biggest change came in September 2025. Zhuanzhuan announced it would gradually close its "free market" (自由市场), where strangers traded directly, and keep only the model in which it buys, inspects, prices and resells goods itself. By then person-to-person trades made up less than 3% of its sales. Chief executive Huang Wei said the open model had left room for fraud and grey-market deals, and that disputes between buyers and sellers were hard to settle.

For buyers, this removes the classic second-hand scam: a seller who takes payment and disappears, or moves you to WeChat for a "deposit". It does not remove all risk. You are now trusting Zhuanzhuan's own inspectors and pricing, and 2026 brought two kinds of complaints about both.

Inspections and recycling prices

Sina Finance collected the cases in August 2026. A Hangzhou buyer paid RMB 3,808 for a 2022 MacBook whose report said "no replaced parts found". Two months later the screen flickered, Zhuanzhuan's own recheck still called it original, and an Apple store said it was not. Other buyers reported similar mismatches with phones.

Recycling drew the second complaint. A video by a Zhuanzhuan recycling host quoted RMB 13,500 for an RTX 5090 D graphics card that sold for more than RMB 25,000 through mainstream channels. Viewers who went through the video frame by frame claimed the price had been dubbed over and that the host had first said RMB 8,888, the figure in Sina's headline; that is their reading, not a confirmed fact. The host said the video was shot in July, when RMB 13,500 was a fair price. Users had filed more than 123,000 complaints about Zhuanzhuan on the Black Cat complaints platform by then. That is a measure of volume, not a ruling, but it shows where disputes cluster: inspection results, refunds and quotes.

What the app collects

Apple's China label is short. It says identifiers are used to track you, and that identifiers, usage data, diagnostics and contact details are linked to you. The privacy policy that took effect on 4 August 2026 lists far more, so we score the policy.

When the app starts, its SDKs collect device IDs (OpenUDID, Android ID, IDFA, IMEI, IMSI, OAID), the list of installed apps, your IP address and sensor data. For fraud checks the policy adds MAC address, serial number, browsing and order history. Search uses Wi-Fi access points, cell tower data and gyroscope readings. The clipboard is read on the device, and only Zhuanzhuan share codes are uploaded.

Identity is the heaviest part. Posting, chatting, selling to recycling, paying or trading game accounts needs your name and ID number, and "risk scenarios" trigger face verification run by Tencent Cloud. Face data is stored apart from your ID, encrypted, and kept for five years. Renting a phone through Zhuanzhuan Lezu asks for even more: ID photos, face data, bank card, employer and contacts, and on Android, with your consent, screen-capture data for fraud checks. Everything collected in China is stored in China.

Security and the record

We found no reported breach of Zhuanzhuan accounts. The policy describes SSL, encrypted storage and access controls, and promises to notify users of any incident. Chats with sellers and support are not end-to-end encryptedEnd-to-end encryptionEncryption in which only the sender and the recipient can read a message. The company running the service cannot see its content.More in the glossary. We found no security response centre or bug bounty of Zhuanzhuan's own; 58.com runs one, but we could not confirm that it covers Zhuanzhuan.

The regulatory record is light. In June 2020 the Haidian district market regulator in Beijing reportedly fined the operator RMB 30,000 and issued a warning for misleading product descriptions; we saw this in a 2022 news roundup, not in the original decision. A RMB 7,000 copyright fine in Tianjin is context, not a consumer case. Unlike Xianyu, we found no cyberspace or industry ministry order that names the app.

How to use Zhuanzhuan more safely

1. Pay only inside the app. With the free market gone, anyone selling "on Zhuanzhuan" who asks for a direct transfer is outside the platform.
2. Test a device on the day it arrives: battery health, screen, cameras, Face ID or fingerprint, and serial number against the report.
3. Take any doubt to the brand's own service centre before the return window closes, and keep the inspection report.
4. Compare recycling quotes with at least one other buyer before you ship a phone, and wipe it first.
5. Turn off personalised recommendations under My, Settings, Privacy settings, Recommendation management, and delete stored tags there.

How we scored it

The regulatory record (81) is the strongest factor, with one small, reported 2020 fine. Privacy (34) is the weakest, because the policy collects device IDs, the app list and face data kept for five years, far more than Apple's label shows. Security (47) has no known breach but no confirmed bug bounty, and scams and harmful content (50) improved when person-to-person sales closed, while inspection and pricing disputes keep it in the middle.