The Ministry of Defence has launched its own auction website to dispose of military surplus equipment, including everything from uniforms and boots, to fire engines and ships.
The Disposal Sales Agency, who are running the website, have sold over £700m worth of surplus equipment since the early 1990s. One government contractor commented, “We are optimistic that the auction site will be a success, as it is a very low cost route to accessing a totally new marketplace.” Spokesman Les Taylor said that the site was likely to appeal to specialist collectors, scrap metal merchants, adventure training companies and scout groups.
I must admit that the thought of camouflage gear and riot shields doesn’t make me come over all spendy: the new site’s appeal is, I think, going to be severely limited. What I like best about this story is the way that even the British government and its representatives are trying to piggy-back on eBay’s success for their own publicity. Mind you, when I visited, the site was unusably slow, and extremely prone to server errors… maybe it’s more like eBay than I thought.
Via eBay Paypal Blog.
2 Responses
Perhaps they should divert some of the surplus IT equipment back from their sales to keep the site operational….
They should do a test as to which generates more ‘profit’: eBay or their site…. if it’s eBay, as a taxpayer, I am not amused. They should be in the business of rasing as much cash as possible!
I also got a number of server errors…