Walking past a newsstand near my office yesterday, I saw the banner headline “Tube Bosses Buy Parts on eBay”. The accompanying story told us, in faintly mocking tones, how engineers working on the London Underground system have resorted to using the online auction firm because the parts they need are so old that they cannot get the pieces they need from regular stock.
Now it may at first appear a terrible thing that our metro systems are so old that the folk running them have to resort to an online auction set up by those vulgar American geeks from their Silicon Valley offices to get the stuff they need. But (drums roll!) I have a certain admiration for the Tube staff who had the entrepreneurial savvy to make use of the amazingly successful eBay platform. If the power of the internet can make my journey to work a bit smoother, I ain’t complaining.
It makes me wonder how many other major businesses are resorting to services like eBay to solve their inventory supply needs. I think it is still not yet possible for an airline to buy jet engines that way, though you never know. Is capitalism great or what?
Patton needed some parts or tools and ordered them from the Sears catalog.
Got them in Germany, IIRC.
He didn’t do it again.
Well, they are using e-bay type (Link)auctions to sell excess supplies and such here in the U.S. You might want to point these intrepid civil servants to http://www.govdeals.com(Link)
Jonathan,
Actually many large corporations do buy a big chunk of their kit in exactly this way. I work in the oil industry where many items such as drilling pipes, pumps, chemicals, cement, etc are bought directly over the web or on internet auctions. Relentless competive cost pressure is pushing the whole supply chain management in this direction. It’s cheaper for us just as buying books on Amazon is cheaper for you.
If you ever feel you live in ripoff Britain then the most powerful thing you can do is to try to buy everything on the web – esp the stuff that is inexplicably costlier in shops and dealer rooms such as white goods, cars, PCs, etc.
What’s keeping them from upgrading the “tube?”
Gary:
Socialism.
I love it when the Tube gets criticised day after day after day. They should try coming to the North of England and managing to travel on public transport up there!
Why is socialism to blame for the state of the Tube. I travelled the Northern (Misery) Line for 13 years until 1995 under a Tory government. As I recall, the ticket prices went on rising while the service stayed as crappy as ever. I reckon the best thing London could do would be to blow it up and start again with modern solutions or a proper Metro.
Part of the reason for its cost problems is that it is too old and outmoded (even tunnel size is a problem) for realistic adequate maintenance. In aiddition it is a hodgepodge of mix n match railway systems — the Noerthern Line, for example, had its beginnings in the 1890s but is now a vastly complicated system incorporating two separately underground lines and an old overground main line. Not to mention the tunnels and stations to nowhere abandoned or never completed in ambitious expansion plans of the 1930s (See “The Northern Line: a Short History” by M A C Horne, published by Douglas Rose) for further enlightenment.
Only the very rich — or the National Trust — can afford or manage to maintain ancient “great houses” after a certain age. This is no different. The Tube is a vast warren of a museum in motion.
It’s had it. Kaput. It is an ex-Underground.
I found the story exceedingly amusing for some bizarre reason.
I was looking for Ford Cobra’s on ebay a few years ago and found a Cobra Attack Helicopter for sale on ebay. Jet engines would not suprise me at all.
Travis
What other businesses get their stuff on eBay? Well, I am a museum curator. eBay and Google are my friends. I’ve bought Old Things on eBay, and used both eBay and Google to get an idea of the kind of prices these things are going for today. The auditors are SO much happier if they have a rough estimate of value.
You don’t get the truly old items on eBay – but even the very old and valuable artifacts are worth more to a museum if they’re in context. And you can buy a lot of context cheaply this way.
Ellen
Ellen’s post points up an under-appreciated fact — the immense positive externality provided by open markets. Many customer, many suppliers, all meet and exchange in a market. This is a massive source of efficiency of course. But some very large number of people get the side-benefit of the price information generated by these markets. Ebay did not set out to create a context so museum curators could assess the value of things NOT traded on Ebay — but the ingenuity of people taking advantage of their (free) price information is creating all kinds of spin-off efficiencies. Cool.
Hey! A whole escalator assembly (down into the new tube) was just stolen here in Shenzhen a week or so ago. Wonder if it’s going to end up in England?
There are some amazing Old Things on eBay but I found the pricing is often the result of feeding frenzy,popular vendors and similar items reach wildly variable prices. Careful searches pay dividends as there can be dozens examples of what one is looking for.
I would advise bidders to get good picture processing software as quite dismal pictures turn out to be of very nice things.
BTW It begs the question of how specialist parts for the tube are going begging.
In a few places here in the states they have a reverse ebay system running. The local city says they need 10 new sedans and they open bids. But instead of closed bids they allow everyone to see them online like ebay. The best bidder gets the business. They have said there is a major savings. It simplifies the whole sealed bid and complex process.
Reverse ebay is a big thing if the governments can ever see the good in it.
I find it amazing that it now takes an average of 2 YEARS for these incompetent London Underground scum to rebuild an escalator. I presume that the escalator is handcrafted by one person obeying the stringent Transport for London working hours of 32 hours per week, no heavy lifting of anything more than 0.5lb, at least 2x 1 hour teabreaks and the right to 1 year’s sickness benefit (not forgetting the free health club membership) should you inadvertently stub your little toe on anything – all this for £38,000 a year plus overtime and the right to go out on strike for any reason at any time!
As for Ken’s comment, my only experience of public transport in the north is having used the amazingly efficient Manchester Metro system which is rather like the DLR, only better organised, cleaner and far better run than anything London has to offer.
For my jet engines, I always go to barnstormers.com.
It is a commonly cited anecdote on this side of the pond that (prior to post-Columbia upgrades) NASA engineers were forced to bid on EBay for 1970’s-era electronic parts to repair ancient Space Shuttle GNC (guidance, navigation & control) computers.
Please note that NASA is one of the most centrally planned and inefficient agencies in the entire Federal government. One of the few truly good policies of the Bush administration is the attempt to overhaul this Cold War structure into something a bit more responsive.
Julian Taylor,
Nearly spot on,it is just that she had to go on maternity leave a fortnight after she took the job.