Posted by David Sherman on Saturday, May 13, 2006 at 6:10PM :
In Reply to: I agree. posted by The story I was told... on Saturday, May 13, 2006 at 4:50PM :
No, they haven't stopped selling them, but they've stopped providing Form 97s with them, which means you basically can't title them. Perfectly good driveable M35s have to be parted out because GL is too lazy to get the Form 97s straight, and enough suckers keep bidding on them that they don't care. I hope you're right about the DLA doing away with GL, but I doubt they will. Supposedly it was Al Gore's idea. I don't know. Anybody who's dealt with them can tell you stories of crookedness and incompetence. The worst anybody ever said about the DRMO sales was maybe some bureaucrat was slow. But there was no high-grading of good stuff out of the lots or reporting official sales prices less than what stuff actually sold for.
The DOT standard stuff is always an easy excuse. Which would you rather take a side impact in, a Geo Metro or a HMMWV? Lights, seat belts, air bags, etc can always be added if need be.
There is no way the GL deal can possibly be better for the taxpayers than the old system was, and it's definitely worse for the customers. GL wouldn't be in it if they weren't making loads of money off it, and being a privately-held foreign company all that money's going overseas. Before they won the government contract, Liquidity.com (the parent of GL), was a complete joke. They claimed to be auctioning off excess inventory for big business and industry, but all they had on their web site was a few lots of cheap consumer crap like you'd find at some close-out store.