Carphone Warehouse launch mobile phone auction site

The Carphone Warehouse has launched an online auction site dedicated exclusively to selling used mobile phones. It grandly claims it’ll be in direct competition with eBay for the second-hand mobile market, and says there’s a real need for it in the UK due to the increasing ‘mobile mountain’ of discarded old phones.

After an introductory month of free listings, a flat listing fee of £1.25 will be charged to the seller. £1 of this will be used to check that the mobile phone has not been stolen – a prerequisite for selling on the site is that handset unique ID numbers are registered.

Because many mobile customers change their phones every year on a contract, or simply to keep up with the latest fashion, old phones stack up quickly, but due to a lack of consumer demand (presumably they mean on the high street) and limited store shelf space they’re hard to shift.

This site hopes to change that. Apparently Vodafone already sell end-of-line mobiles on the site, which has been in trial for 4 months and has sold 3,000 handsets per week directly to buyers.

I have to say I like the idea. What do you think?

MyMobileAuction.com