A low level wipe takes a lot longer than a simple re-format. In the cases where something more than a simple re-format is needed, that's when I typically do something a little more sophisticated.
In the example that brought up this line of discussion, I am pretty sure in Android 4.X there are two different wipe settings within the menu, one preserves application data. That can be useful if you are just trying to get rid of malware and not trying to remove all data. It sounds like the person selling in that case just picked the wrong option.
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